


Signals

by epiproctan



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (it's not REALLY sex pollen but), 69 (Sex Position), Alien Biology, Anal Sex, Casual Sex, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Masturbation, Multi, Mutual Pining, Near Death Experiences, Oral Sex, Pining, Polyamory, Sex Pollen, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Smut, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-01-09 18:47:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 40,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12282321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epiproctan/pseuds/epiproctan
Summary: Space is infinite, and varied, and the possibilities that exist in it are numerous. Despite knowing this, Shiro never imagined that he’d find himself the host of alien bacteria that makes him frequently and unbearably horny. That’s exactly where he ends up though, which is unfortunate for a number of reasons discussed herein, but namely because emotions are messy, and so is biology, and so is war. But maybe somewhere between words like, “It’s just sex,” and, “You’re like a brother to me,” three people can find love. And the mission that ruins Shiro’s life might just be the one that saves him, too.(Or, Shiro fucks up, fucks Lance, and fucks Keith over. And things are never the same again.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ngl, i’ve poured myself into this. i’ve been really down a lot lately and this fic has been the thing keeping me going. i hope you enjoy it! i've certainly enjoyed writing it. 
> 
> i started writing this before s3 and kind of just kept rolling with it so pretend everything is normal and there are no sexy clones(?) thanks

The underlying idea was that maybe if Shiro could save a life today, he would be able to sleep tonight.

 

It was a long shot. The nightmares were not bridled by any eager effort to stem their inspiration. Anxiety sits malicious and disruptive in a heart whether it has just cause or not. But if at the end of the day Shiro had crossed off even a single entry in the impossibly lengthy list of “parts of the universe that need saving” it gave him something positive to think about when he rested his head against the pillow. Material proof in the form of lives spared was something, and something was better than nothing.

 

At least that was the idea, and the impetus. But at this particular moment, Shiro was waist-deep in alien sludge, and he did not find that a harbinger of restful sleep at all.

 

Thirteen distress signals had come off of this planet that was purportedly devoid of sentient life. Thirteen is twelve and a half more than one man should reasonably take on alone, and Shiro knew that. But Paladins’ lives are busy things. Pidge and Lance were still on their elongated trip to planet Dlf’na to rally support from the locals, and Allura and Keith were tangled in strategic meeting after strategic meeting with the Blade of Marmora this week. Hunk was of course fixing the broken deltaic capacitor on the Castle-ship under Coran’s supervision _again_ , and so when the signals had registered as within the ship’s range, Shiro had packed himself into his Paladin armor and slipped into the Black Lion’s cockpit alone.

 

“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Keith had told him over the communications link when Shiro had called Allura to tell them where he was going. “Can’t you wait until we get back?”

 

Shiro had shaken his head. “Some of these distress signals are movements old already,” he said. “If they really need help, I want them to get it as fast as possible.”

 

Keith had frowned, but the persuasive power Shiro held over him was generally absolute. He nodded once and left him with a, “Call us if anything happens.”

 

Which is how Shiro found himself here, alone, trudging through what appeared to be an enormous crater full of a viscous purple-gray slime. This wasn’t the first one he’d waded through. The entire planet seemed to be pocked with vast brimming basins. It smelled unpleasantly like sulfur and was warm to the touch, though Shiro’s suit gave him no toxin hazard warnings about it as he tracked the signal to the crater’s center. When he arrived he’d first parked the Black Lion at the edge of one and puttered around the side of it for a while, looking for the origin of the signal. After some time had passed and he saw nothing other than the stretch of sloshing sludge, he’d dipped a toe in. There was no negative reaction, so he’d wallowed into the muck until he reached the exact coordinates of the signal.

 

There he’d found nothing.

 

Now on his third crater he was beginning to wonder if there were really any distress signals at all. Maybe they were a glitch in his handheld detector, or some magnetic anomaly produced by the planet. Maybe they’d been from much longer ago than he’d thought, and whoever had transmitted them were long gone. Either way, it looked like this mission was a bust. With a sigh, Shiro plodded back to his lion and abandoned his objective in favor of removing his helmet in his cockpit and wiping a hand across his sweat-drenched forehead. Trekking through alien slime was a spontaneous cardio workout, if nothing else. He returned to the castle.

 

Alarms blared the moment his right foot hit the floor of the Black Lion’s hangar. He pulled back, stunned, as a whooping siren rose out of the silence, different from the sharp bray that announced an impending attack. He wasn’t sure what caused it until an automated voice cut through the sound and announced, matter-of-factly, “DANGEROUS FOREIGN SUBSTANCE DETECTED.”

 

“Shiro? Is that you?”

 

A different voice interrupted the siren over the ship-wide speakers, and Shiro lingered in the mouth of his lion, waiting for further communication.

 

“We’re going to have to put you in quarantine for a few doboshes!” Coran announced. “The ship doesn’t like something you came into contact with down there.”

 

Shiro sighed. Of course this wasn’t going to be easy, because nothing ever was. He strolled down to quarantine, through the disinfectant chambers, and when he came out the other side he was approached by a beekeeper.

 

Actually, it was just Coran in something resembling a Hazmat suit, but the knowledge of who it was didn’t soothe Shiro’s mounting concern at all.

 

“Is everything okay, Coran?” Shiro asked as Coran began herding him along. They were headed in the direction of the healing pods, and Shiro couldn’t say that he was a fan of the implications of this series of events.

 

“Just peachy!” Coran replied. “But something about the planet you were just on appears to be quite the threat to our wellbeing. I’d like to toss you in a healing pod for a couple of vargas, just to be on the safe side!”

 

Coran sounded cheery and unbothered, which was an eerie contrast to Shiro’s mood. Regardless, he stripped out of his Paladin armor and donned the white suit required for healing pod use, sighing as he went.

 

* * *

 

 

When Shiro came to, slipping out of the healing pod on shaking legs, he almost stumbled straight into Allura. Her mouth was drawn down into a deep frown, and she took a half step back when he came towards her, her nose crinkling. It took a moment of Shiro swimming through the haze in his head to realize that she was trying to keep her distance from him.

 

“What is it?” he asked, internal alarms ringing. He probably didn’t smell fantastic after the healing pod, but he didn’t think that necessarily warranted her expression, which might belong to someone finding a cockroach in their bed.

 

“You’re certain he’s safe, Coran?” she called over her shoulder, her eyes still trained on him.

 

“Positive!” Coran called back. “Those antibiotics will kill just about anything! Hopefully not Shiro himself, though.”

 

“Antibiotics?” Shiro echoed, vaguely remembering Coran brandishing a needle at him before the frost of the healing pod overtook him.

 

“You contracted a very deadly disease on that planet, Shiro,” Allura answered, her expression finally softening, if only marginally. “We must gather with the rest of the team to discuss the consequences of this.”

 

Shiro was allowed to put his casual clothes back on (not his armor, which according to Coran was still undergoing thorough disinfecting, along with his lion and the castle hallways he walked through on the way to quarantine). He then followed Allura into the bridge, where the other Paladins were already waiting. They all stood as he came in, eyeing him carefully, head to toe.

 

“He looks fine,” Lance noted. Shiro was left to assume that everyone had already heard about whatever he had come into contact with down there, but that didn’t explain the meeting.

 

“Are you feeling okay?” Keith asked, frowning. He hadn’t stopped examining Shiro, as though he could monitor the details of his health from across the room.

 

“Yes, but I’d like to know what’s going on,” Shiro said.

 

Allura strode directly to her console and summoned a holoscreen before her, drawing up a picture now too familiar to Shiro: a rocky gray planet, dotted with insalubrious purple spots visible even from space.

 

“Shiro, may I safely assume you found no one in need of saving on the surface of V-7340-8?” Allura asked.

 

“Yeah.” Shiro felt his forehead crease in concern. “The whole place was empty, except for these giant craters full of purple slime.”

 

Her face was troubled to match his. “That wasn’t just any slime, I’m afraid. Each of those craters is home to a vast collection of a certain species of microorganism.” She paused, and zoomed in on her holoscreen, giving a microscopic display of something too fuzzy and too numerous for Shiro’s liking. “Essentially, it’s made up of pure, concentrated bacteria.”

 

Shiro’s stomach rolled. The purple sludge which had seemed vaguely unpleasant when he was in contact with it now not only gained a connotation of revulsion in his mind but also seemed somehow sentient and malicious. He felt unhygienic, disgust making the hair on his arms stand on end, like traces of it could still be found on his skin despite his complete disinfecting and the time he spent in the healing pod.

 

“That doesn’t sound too good,” Hunk said, echoing Shiro’s thoughts. “What does that mean?”

 

“Pidge and I did some research, it turns out the bacteria are rather harmful,” Allura replied. “Traces of it have been found throughout the universe with a colorful variety of negative effects.”

 

Hunk took about four steps away from Shiro at that, eyes guarded and fearful.

 

“Don’t worry. Shiro is not in mortal danger and we have put him on powerful antibiotics,” Allura explained. “The bacteria have been contained and he’s no longer contagious. That being said, the resulting symptoms may persist for quite some time.”

 

“Symptoms?” repeated Keith, looking over at Shiro again. Shiro hoped the instinctive clenching of his jaw was imperceptible, because Keith’s eyes felt like a hot knife flaying him open where they landed. It left an insatiable itch. Shiro’s mouth was watering.

 

“The bacteria appear to have carnivorous tendencies,” Pidge cut in to explain, pulling up a diagram of the bacteria’s cell structure onto her holoscreen. Shiro couldn’t tell it apart from any of the pictures in his high school biology textbook. “It doesn’t eat Earthlings, for some reason. Something about our pH balance. But if it had been Allura or Keith out there they’d be goners.”

 

Shiro immediately tried to banish the image of trillions of microscopic creatures eating Keith alive from his brain forever, but it was so visceral that it stuck revoltingly to the forefront of his mind. He found himself nauseated. And tired. So, _so_ tired.

 

“Are you saying those distress signals were from people who landed there and got eaten?” Lance asked.

 

Pidge’s face grew dark behind her glasses. “It’s worse than that. They’re smart, these bacteria. They adapt and evolve quickly. They seem to have observed a case in which one of their victims sent out a distress signal as it was being eaten, and noticed it attracted others to the surface of the planet.”

 

“Oh god,” interjected Hunk, his face resembling an algal bloom in color.

 

“What?” snapped Keith, his dots not quite connected.

 

“They learned how to mimic a common distress signal,” Pidge said. “And they can emit them into space.”

 

Lance looked just barely this side of absolutely devastated. “We can’t even trust distress signals anymore?”

 

“We’ve _never_ been able to trust distress signals, in case you’ve forgotten,” Keith said. “Anyway, what’s this about Shiro’s symptoms?”

 

“Glad you asked,” Pidge replied, lips thinned. She pulled up another diagram, this one of the human body. “In species the bacteria can’t digest, it becomes parasitic and uses the person who came in contact with it as a host. Its goal is to find food, so it rewires the brain of its carrier to make it easier to pass from host to food source.”

 

Here she stopped and sighed, and shot an apologetic look in Shiro’s direction that made his stomach twist, as if it wasn’t rolling already. “The bacteria are most easily transferred sexually. So, to encourage that, the most common consequence seems to be frequent, unrelenting arousal.”

 

The room went so silent that Shiro could just about hear the stars burning outside, light years away. Every pair of eyes was on him in that moment, and he felt the urge to inconspicuously cover himself, though this “frequent, unrelenting arousal” hadn’t quite set in yet. A bead of sweat sprung up at the back of his neck and trickled down, and his body grew warm under his skin all over with the realization of what this meant. He endured the worried stares and looked down.

 

Lance broke the silence first. “That’s not so bad, right? He’s just gotta jack off a lot.” A smirk crossed his face. “Honestly Shiro could probably use it anyway.”

 

“This isn’t a joke, Lance,” Keith snapped, whirling on him.

 

“I only hope it’s that easy,” Pidge said, ignoring Keith and swiping through her diagrams. They appeared to be annotated in a variety of alien languages and decipherable only to her, and whatever she was reading was making her frown.

 

Shiro spoke for the first time, anxiety rising further in his gut. “What do you mean?”

 

“Well,” Pidge said, “if the bacteria is so evolved, will just masturbating be satisfying to its host? Or will it need a second participant?”

 

Shiro spoke quickly. “I’ll be fine on my own.”

 

“You say that now,” Pidge replied with a shrug. “But if anyone here’s been trying to bang Shiro, this might be your chance.”

 

Shiro didn’t want to think about that. The implications of someone sleeping with him because he was infected to be unbearably horny had so many layers of immorality he didn’t know where to begin peeling them apart, even if that person was a willing participant. Something like that also sounded like the kind of irreversible snarl that could undermine an entire team that was built on trust and camaraderie. Plus, he couldn’t accept that offer from just anyone, and though he had a previously-conceived idea of who present in this room he wouldn’t mind lending him a hand, he couldn’t hope that that would have anything resembling a positive outcome.

 

It was impossible, anyway. He’d never see him like that.

 

“I’ll handle it by myself,” Shiro said, hoping his tone conveyed the finality and conviction that he felt.

 

“Up to you,” Pidge said with a shrug. “But keep in mind that you’re not contagious anymore, so you can safely do whatever you want.”

 

“Well,” Allura said, turning briskly towards the navigation console, “I’m certain Shiro would appreciate some rest now.”

 

That he would. Being passed from quarantine to healing pod to a meeting where he was told he was about to be insistently aroused for a prolonged and indeterminate period of time hadn’t given him much chance to process since his mission. More than anything he needed to lay down with his thoughts and figure out what he was going to do. And with the promise of a sudden and demanding erection hanging over him like a guillotine blade of humiliation, he wanted to get away from the rest of the team as quickly as possible.

 

They all dispersed to their rooms, exhausted from their respective duties. Shiro undressed to his underwear and folded his clothes neatly before lying flat on his cot. He dimmed the lights, shut his eyes, and prepared himself to hope for a few hours of fitful sleep before he was awakened by nightmares or anxiety.

 

He didn’t make it that far.

 

It started like spiderwebbing cracks. He could feel his individual nerve endings catching fire as they went, centralized in his lower body and working out from there. It was slow, at first. A tingling itch, ignorable. But with exponential speed, the heat spread rapid and unrelenting like uninhibited wildfire, making him sweat. He twisted and rolled in bed, but his limbs refused to lay right, and any place where his skin touched his own skin was too damp and stuck uncomfortably. His heart rate picked up, stuttered, and climbed again.

 

Shiro was not a stranger to sleeplessness, but this wasn’t it in its usual form. He was achingly hard and any delusions that he’d ever had of falling asleep were completely dashed by a desperate and all-consuming need that trembled in his extremities. The thought of even his hand on himself was like a glass of cold water after an eternity in a desert.

 

He tried to keep it professional and perfunctory. Shiro had no use for dragging this out, as good as it felt. It was relaxing, absolutely. A good tool for anxiety reduction. But for him to be at peak physical performance in the morning, as the universe demanded of him, sleep would be infinitely more valuable to him. It didn’t seem like his body was going to get this go easily, though. He kept his clothes on. His pace was brisk and his motions were simple. He knew how to go about this efficiently from his years crowded into the Garrison barracks, from his time aboard a cramped rocket blasting through space where solitude was rare. He came with barely a grunt, mechanically wiped himself off, and again shut his eyes.

 

It crept in at the edges of his consciousness. A glowing ember at the pit of his gut. It sparked, caught, and suddenly Shiro was aflame like dry tinder left in the worst possible place. Shiro rolled over, and groaned into his pillow. It wasn’t a sound of pleasure.

 

The cold shower didn’t help. If anything it spurred him on, rivulets of water streaming down the hard lines of his muscle and the protrusions of his bone. He leaned one forearm against the wall and let the water pour through the hair on his bowed head as he stroked himself. Exhausted, he watched his come spiral down the drain.

 

And despite all logic, despite usual human biology, despite thoughts of decapitated puppies and his grandmother’s toenails and his time in the Galra fighting ring, he laid out on his bed again and felt himself growing hard again, and again, and again.

 

* * *

 

Keith strode to his bedroom door. Stopped. Rubbed his chin self-consciously. Turned on his heel and walked back the full length of the room. Rinse and repeat. And repeat, and repeat.

 

It wasn’t that Pidge’s words were still ringing in his ears. (They were, but they had nothing to do with his current predicament, he promised himself. “If anyone here’s been trying to bang Shiro….” Keith wasn’t trying to _bang_ Shiro. Keith was trying to do a lot of things to Shiro, with Shiro, and if one of the entries in the laundry list of ways Keith wished he could spend time with the man involved being naked in a bed together then that was his business.)

 

That wasn’t the point. The point was that his friend was suffering. _Voltron_ was suffering. It was a little ridiculous how many times over the past few days that Shiro had to bolt out of the room with a pained expression on his face in the same way that Hunk fled to the bathroom when he was feeling nauseous. Keith was well aware that Shiro wasn’t really enjoying himself. He could see the dark bags under his eyes, worse than usual, probably from being kept up by his own overwhelming libido. The foundational strength of Shiro’s voice was faltering. There were often times when he was simply absent, probably holed up in the safety of his own room with the bottle of weblum lubricant that Hunk had accidentally told everyone he’d witnessed Shiro nab out of the laboratory.

 

What he was up to wasn’t a secret, much to Shiro’s oft- and intensely-displayed humiliation. No one talked about it openly. If at all it was behind cupped hands, whispered into ears. Everyone was understanding. It wasn’t Shiro’s fault. There was a lot of tiptoeing, a lot of casual questions of, “Is there anything I can get you? Are you doing okay? Anything I can do to help?” But no one brought it up point-blank, out of respect, or out of embarrassment.

 

But Keith might have to.

 

As Shiro’s best friend. As Shiro’s trusted right arm. As someone who would be devoted to helping Shiro out with a problem if it meant Shiro would be more comfortable and that Voltron could run more smoothly. As someone who wouldn’t in the least mind Shiro’s cock up his—

 

Keith shook his head. Maybe Pidge was right. Maybe Shiro just needed a partner, and then his daily anguish would be mitigated. Keith didn’t know if it was true, but it was worth a shot. And there was no one else on the ship more suitable for that than him. The only reason he hadn’t yet was because he didn’t know how to bring it up.

 

(That, and the fact that rejection is a terror so powerful that even the thought of it seizes brave Paladins’ muscles and makes them forget how to speak.)

 

He could do it though. He could charge out of this room as easily as he had charged headfirst at Zarkon and find the words to placate Shiro. He could coax Shiro into bed with him, shuck off all his clothing and run his hands over Shiro’s hard body. He could open himself up for him, present himself bare, and feel for Shiro until he pressed their skin together. He could hold him and kiss him until Shiro realized that not only did he want to have Keith help him with his current conundrum but also to have Keith in his arms, in his bed, day after day after day, for the rest of his hopefully long life.

 

This time when Keith paced towards his door, he opened it, and walked out into the hall.

 

Around this time of day there were a few places Shiro could be. His room, for one. Keith couldn’t decide if interrupting Shiro during one of his “attacks” would make the situation easier or more difficult, but he was left continuing to wonder when it turned out Shiro wasn’t in his room. He wandered towards the kitchen next, thinking maybe Shiro was rehydrating, but only found two of the mice standing in front of Hunk’s food stash, clearly up to no good. He left them to their work and made a circuit through the lounge, the training room, and the Black Lion’s hangar, before ending up outside the door to the bridge.

 

It was open, and Keith nearly strode inside without a second thought before he heard voices that froze him. Shiro was talking out loud, revealing the presence of an unknown third party, and Keith obviously couldn’t ask Shiro something so personal in front of others, both out of respect for Shiro and Keith’s own embarrassment. He could come back later, but he found himself hovering in the shadows of the doorway, trying to catch the low notes of Shiro’s voice.

 

“…very, uh, thoughtful of you.” His tone sounded strained. “But I really can’t trouble you like that.”

 

“Trouble me?” That laughing voice’s owner was obnoxiously unmistakable. Lance. “Dude, having sex definitely doesn’t trouble me. I’m offering.”

 

Something hard and cold jolted in Keith’s stomach. He pressed himself against the wall and listened close.

 

“I appreciate the offer,” Shiro said. There was an implied “but” hanging onto the end there, and Keith waited for it to be voiced, but it never came. Lance seemed to be waiting for it too because the two of them inside the room were both quiet.

 

“Look, man,” Lance said eventually. “You’re obviously in need of assistance. I can help you out. I don’t really see any downsides here.”

 

There was a pause. “Are you sure you don’t feel pressured into this?”

 

“You know me, Shiro,” Lance replied, and there was something in his voice that gave away his impending sense of triumph. “I wouldn’t offer if this was something I didn’t want to do. I’ll let you know if I want to stop.”

 

“What about the rest of the team?” Shiro asked, and his voice was quiet and frayed around the edges. He was revealing vulnerability in the form of a pressing worry.

 

“What about them?” Lance said. “It’s between you and me. Just sex. It won’t change anything.”

 

Shiro was thinking. That much was obvious from the extended silence. Keith expected Lance to jump in with more words, more persuasion, but he was respectfully quiet. So was Keith, though the muscles in his legs screamed. He wanted to launch himself into the room, and it was a testament to his effort to restrain himself that he could acknowledge the situation for what it was: something that no one would want to be walked in on.

 

“Okay,” Shiro finally said, like he was letting out a tired sigh. He sounded less than pleased. “Thank you, Lance.”

 

Keith’s hands clenched into hard fists, and his chest felt just as tight.

 

“No problem at all,” Lance replied. “Let me know the minute you need me, alright?”

 

“You promise you’ll tell me if you don’t want to?” was Shiro’s next question, but Keith didn’t wait around to hear Lance’s reply. He left the ebullient voice fading behind him and stalked back the way he came, all the way to his room.

 

* * *

 

 

“How long is it supposed to last?” Shiro had asked Allura when they sat alone after dinner the night before.

 

She must have seen the bow of his neck, the slump of his shoulders, the tired aversion of his eyes, because she had rested a hand on his shoulder. This was worse than sleepless nights. Those had been bad already. Those had him buckling in private under their weight. This was a new, and infinitely heavier, burden.

 

“I can’t say,” she replied, tone soft. “We don’t know the details, but we expect it might be several movements.”

 

Shiro’s body seemed to have crumpled in on itself after that. He bent forward, leaning his elbows on his thighs and sloped inward to run a hand through his hair.

 

“Shiro,” Allura said. “You know we are all here to support you. If there’s anything we can help you with—” Shiro visibly blanched and Allura paused. “Not necessarily in the way you’re thinking of. The day-to-day things, I mean. Keith can pilot the Black Lion.”

 

Shiro’s right hand was clenched into a tight fist. He had to consciously think about releasing each of his fingers to pry it open.

 

“I won’t ask him to do that again, if I’m around,” he said, straightening up.

 

“Shiro, we can help you,” Allura said, letting some impatience bleed into her tone. Shiro knew it came from a place of concern, but he still recoiled a little bit. “If it’s about the…condition…I’m certain we can find someone to, er, assist you.”

 

At that time, Shiro had protested even the idea of it. He didn’t have time to be masturbating every few hours but he _especially_ didn’t have time to engage with a partner. Partners required care, time, and effort, even when it was a situation without feelings involved. He didn’t have the resources to get caught up in something like that, especially, as the implication went, with someone who he had to work with closely on a daily basis.

 

That had been his thought process last night. Today, things were different.

 

The need kept mounting. Over the past few days it had gone from an insistent tickle at his gut to an all-consuming desperation. What he had thought the first night was an unbearable heat now seemed tepid in comparison to the blaze that seemed to crackle in his muscles at all times. Getting off was like ice water splashed in his face, painful and shocking, and though it eased the burn for a little while it never put the flame out at its source.

 

Today alone had been hellish. He was starting to become painfully aware of other people’s bodies. He would like to claim that it wasn’t in a creepy way. That it was simply like he could just feel their heat radiating off of them even if they were across the room, or think that they smelled good when they brushed by him. It didn’t necessarily stir sexual thoughts that weren’t already there but he knew that these changes were temptation originating from within his own body. That, paired with the visceral need he felt, might bend him until he snapped.

 

When Lance had approached him on the bridge, it was during a blessed reprieve. He’d only moments before finished washing his hands of his own semen and wandered down here to look at space, hoping for a distraction. The distraction he got wasn’t one he expected. Instead of finding solace in the stars his interest was piqued by a presence behind him. Lance’s slim neck looked particularly unguarded today.

 

Shiro _knew_ it was a bad idea. He didn’t know how bad at the time, but he knew it wasn’t smart. But Pidge’s theory about things getting easier if he gave into it stuck in his mind like it’d been tacked to his brain. Lance was _offering_. Lance smelled lovely and his skin looked soft and his eyelashes were thick and curled gently and he was _offering_. And Shiro was in pain, and exhausted.

 

Which is how Shiro ultimately ended up here. Here, being in front of Lance’s door. His current state was unsustainable. He was so hard that every step was a crashing wave of pain. He couldn’t even lead himself like this, let alone the sole hope of the free universe. So, he raised his hand and knocked.

 

* * *

 

 

Lance barely glanced up at the sound. “Come in,” he called absently, continuing to flip through what might’ve been a fashion magazine on his tablet. It just as easily could have been a cookbook, and he was trying to figure out from the lavishly colorful pictures which it was with little success.

 

“Lance?” Shiro called back, opening the door and taking a single step so that he hung half in the doorway. “Are you busy right now?”

 

“No, I’ve been expecting you,” Lance said, shutting off his tablet and setting it aside. He threw in an eyebrow wiggle for good measure as he turned to look fully at Shiro, but stopped immediately. “Oh man, you look like shit, dude.”

 

Shiro stepped fully into the room and let the door shut behind him. Lance’s eyes traveled over him. His forehead shone damp as though feverish, strands of his white forelock sticking to it in disarray. His posture read like defeat and his shoulders sloped downwards like he couldn’t draw forth the energy to keep them held high. Lance also couldn’t miss the obvious strain in his tight pants, and all the implications of that came flooding forward, making his mouth go tacky and dry.

 

“Sorry,” Shiro replied, rubbing the back of his neck. “We don’t have to—”

 

“Stop that,” Lance said. “Sit here.”

 

They changed spots. Lance stood and waited for Shiro to sit, perched on the edge of the bed, his fingers white as they clutched the mattress on either side of him. He looked up apprehensively.

 

“So, I thought we could talk about your boundaries fi—.”

 

Shiro cut off with a gasp as Lance’s knees hit the floor.

 

“Is this okay?” Lance asked, putting a hand on the muscle of either thigh and pushing them apart. Damn, they were solid, and each worth at least two of Lance’s.

 

“Uh, sure, that’s— _ohh_.”

 

Lance hadn’t even _done_ anything and he already had Shiro moaning. The tip of his finger rested on the curve of Shiro’s bulge, tracing it from the head down. It was openly impressive, and regardless of his motivations for getting into this situation Lance wanted his mouth on it as soon as he could manage. He’d _known_ Shiro was hung. You could tell just by looking at the guy. But having that thought tucked away in the back of your mind is different from being confronted by it a mere six inches from your nose.

 

“I’m going to take this off,” Lance said, both hands reaching for Shiro’s belt. Shiro went quiet, unobjecting, and let the _clink-clink_ of the buckle be the only sound in the room. Lance glanced up at his face for signs of discontent but instead found parted lips and eyes that roved over Lance appreciatively.

 

He’d had a feeling that Shiro was going to come to him tonight. Lance wasn’t stupid enough to miss the way Shiro had been acting. The jerky way he pulled back when he touched other people. The frequent disappearances. The stiffness in his steps. Shiro needed a good lay immediately, and since Lance was the one to offer, Lance knew that Shiro would be showing up at his door sooner rather than later.

 

Objectively, Shiro was attractive. Objectively, Lance couldn’t really imagine why someone would _not_ want to volunteer to help Shiro get off, if just for the opportunity to put their hands on _that_. It was more than just his incredible body, diamond hard and perfectly sculpted beneath Lance’s fingers. It was in his soft gray eyes and ruggedly handsome face, his features the kind that had girls imagining potential future children and straight men thinking for the first time that they possibly aren’t. Shiro was the kind of person you trusted would treat you right in bed, even across the wide spectrum of definitions “right” could hold. Objectively, physically, Lance would enjoy this. But his agenda was a little bit deeper than simply bedding an attractive man.

 

The outfit he was wearing, as a result, was absolutely premeditated in its revealing nature. He usually wore the robe that he’d found in one of his drawers over his blue Paladin pajamas in his leisure time, but this evening he’d forgone the pajamas and slid the robe over his bare skin instead. He knew how it looked. The opening hung loose around his shoulders, revealing a collarbone, threatening to slip down one side. The only thing preventing his lower body from meeting open air was the thin strip of fabric he kept tied about his waist. He had to keep Shiro coming back, after all, so why not spoil him a little bit?

 

He knew the view could keep Shiro entertained while Lance slipped the zipper of his pants down, wrestled the garment from around his hips, and tugged at the elastic band of his underwear until Shiro’s erection was bared. It was exactly as large as he had presumed, though Lance found something about the pink of it cute. He bent closer to get a better look, and licked his lips.

 

“Lance, you don’t have to use your mouth,” Shiro just about wheezed from above him. “Your hand is fine.”

 

“I know,” Lance replied, and immediately lowered his lips around Shiro’s cock.

 

In a few months, Keith would ask Lance when exactly he had fallen in love with Shiro. Unsurprisingly, Lance would not cite this moment. What he would remember this particular instance for was the breathless, strained sound that escaped from Shiro’s throat, the heaviness of his bulk on his tongue, the sharp taste of his precum. This was not the first dick Lance had sucked in his life, but it did seem like a notable one, as one belonging to his hero-leader who was stifling noises beautiful enough to make Lance have to readjust his clothes.

 

He didn’t draw it out. There wasn’t much of a need to, not when Shiro seemed ready to burst at any moment before he had even touched him. He wasn’t trying to hurt the guy. He was trying to help him. And if that involved pressing his nose into Shiro’s pubic hair, letting his tip sink into his throat, pulling back with a hard suck that had Shiro clutching at his hair then that was perfect. He threw in a few presses of his tongue into Shiro’s slit for good measure but it only took a few languid sucks before Shiro’s hips jerked forward. Then, he was coming down Lance’s throat.

 

“Sorry, sorry,” Shiro said, trying to tug Lance off, but Lance swallowed it all. He licked his lips once he had pulled back, ignoring Shiro’s protests and apologies. It wasn’t like it tasted good, but Lance wasn’t a quitter and his older sister had once told Lance that semen is good for your skin. Plus, this seemed like the quickest way to make sure Shiro would be a returning customer.

 

“How’re you feeling?” Lance asked, blinking up at Shiro languidly.

 

“I’m….” Shiro paused in his motions of tucking himself back into his pants. Frowned. Thought. “A lot better, actually.”

 

He reached a hand down to Lance, who used it to haul himself to his feet.

 

“Told you I could help,” Lance said with a wink.

 

Shiro’s frown resolved itself at that, twisting to become something more akin to a smile. But not quite. “Thanks, Lance. That was uh. Pretty good.”

 

“Pretty good,” Lance scoffed. “I’d like to see you find a better blowjob in this galaxy.”

 

The laugh that this drew from Shiro surprised Lance. Though small, it didn’t come across as indulgent, and Lance was caught by the stretch of Shiro’s smile. “Yeah, I’d be hard pressed to, I think.”

 

Lance restrained himself from crafting a pun around that wording and instead reached out his hand in return. Shiro still sat on the edge of the bed, though his hands now rested open on his thighs, and he leaned back with an easy casualness. It was like quarrying summer from winter, the change that Shiro had gone through in the past few minutes, and Lance definitely didn’t hate it. It was nice to see the man back to himself.

 

But Shiro just froze and stared at Lance’s proffered limb.

 

“Oh,” he said, and both hands came up, hovering in the general vicinity of Lance’s waistline. “You, uh. I should….”

 

Lance shook his head. “Nah, don’t worry about it.”

 

“Really?” Shiro asked, grabbing Lance’s hand and using it to stand. Lance had to take a step back to look up into his eyes.

 

“Yeah,” Lance replied. “Next time. Get some rest.”

 

Shiro searched his face, and Lance let his expression rest in a comfortable smile.

 

“Next time,” Shiro said with a resolute nod, his tone same one he used when he confirmed battle plans.

 

* * *

 

Shiro didn’t sleep well, but Shiro never did. Instead, he slept poorly but wholly undisturbed by his reproductive organs.

 

* * *

 

Keith stepped out of his room one morning, and nearly slammed headlong into Shiro.

 

“Oh,” he said, taking a half-step back and steadying himself with a single hand on his doorframe. “Sorry.”

 

Shiro, instead of replying, turned to look at him with eyes wide. From the way he hadn’t been paying attention to Keith’s door opening Keith assumed he had been in a rush to get somewhere, but the interruption had him frozen in place. Keith couldn’t miss the flush high on Shiro’s cheekbones. He looked ill.

 

“Are you okay?” Keith asked.

 

“Yeah,” Shiro replied, shifting his stance uncomfortably. He looked somehow smaller than usual, like he was trying to hide his enormous body behind thin air. “Sorry.”

 

Neither of them said anything after that, just regarding each other. Shiro fidgeted and looked away, which was a gesture so unfamiliar on him that Keith took a half step forward to get a closer look. Sweat was beading at his hairline. He’d obviously been on his way somewhere, so why he wasn’t moving now was—

 

Keith glanced down the hallway in the direction Shiro had been walking. Shiro’s room, as well as the rest of the Castle-ship, was in the opposite direction. The only thing further down the hallway in this direction was the other Paladins’ rooms.

 

Oh. This wasn’t about being sick. Shiro was on his way to visit someone, because he needed to.

 

“You’re going to Lance’s,” Keith spat before he could stop himself.

 

Shiro paled visibly. “How did you…?”

 

“It’s not a secret,” Keith replied. Some kind of bright, hot energy was coursing just under his skin and he tried to soothe it out because this was _Shiro_ , after all, but he couldn’t stop it from coagulating into words. “It’s not like Lance doesn’t talk about messing around with you.”

 

That wasn’t a full truth. If the implication of that statement was that Lance bragged about sleeping with Shiro, it was a false one. But Keith also knew that Lance wasn’t going out of his way to prevent the news from spreading. Yesterday Keith had accidentally overheard Lance telling Pidge that he was on his way to “spend some time with Shiro” and had glanced over in time to catch Lance’s eyebrow wiggle and Pidge’s responding groan and shove at his shoulder. At the very least Pidge knew then, or maybe she thought that Lance was joking. Either way it wouldn’t be farfetched for the news to have spread to Keith naturally, instead of because he had been eavesdropping.

 

“Oh,” Shiro said, and though Keith had anticipated the frown, he didn’t expect the deeply troubled expression. “Yeah, he’s been helping me out. He offered, and it seemed like the best option, given the circumstances.”

 

Those words stuck in Keith’s skin like nettles. The explanation seemed helplessly given. “Huh,” he said, not bothering to keep the scathing skepticism out of his tone.

 

Shiro looked up and met Keith’s eyes, giving him an unsettling genuine look. “It’s just sex, Keith.”

 

Keith didn’t know why Shiro felt the need to tell him that, but it did quiet the roaring in his veins, just a little bit. It was an echo of what Lance had said to Shiro in the first place on the bridge, but somehow the words in Shiro’s voice seemed to ring more resonantly in Keith’s ears. It’s just sex. If it was making Shiro feel better, then that was fine. Keith could live with that, because Shiro’s health and happiness was the ultimate priority.

 

That didn’t stop the searing white emotion from rearing its snarling head when Shiro and Lance showed up to breakfast together, Lance’s hair sticking up on one side and both their clothes disheveled. Or when he overheard Hunk and Pidge whispering about the situation in the longue one evening. Or when he made the mistake of knocking on Shiro’s door to discuss the escalating issues in the Ionnva System with him, and Lance had opened it with an apologetic smile and told Keith to come back later.

 

Keith had almost lost it at that. But he’d grit his teeth, folded his hands into fists, and reminded himself. _It’s just sex._

 

* * *

 

Keith had been on edge lately.

 

Lance could tell. And not just because Lance had long since developed a strange, metaphysical awareness of Keith that extended to things like knowing when Keith’s eyes were on him even when Lance wasn’t looking, or being able to pick Keith’s name out of layers of otherwise incomprehensible babble. This sort of on-edge was loud and evident to not only Lance but all other members of the Castle-ship. It was in the unyielding snap of his orders, and in the long stretches he spent on the training deck, and in the deep frown that crept onto his face if he was left to his thoughts for more than two minutes. Lance, who had an unconscious, accidental bank of Keith’s expressions memorized, had only ever seen that frown in relation to two things: one, having Galra blood, or two, Shiro.

 

Lance didn’t need an explanation for this one. He could draw conclusions for himself, thank you very much.

 

He had to ask anyway.

 

“Hey, man,” Lance said, crashing onto the couch next to Keith.

 

Keith flinched, obviously not having heard him come in, and uncrossed his arms. “Oh. Hey, Lance.”

 

“You doing okay, buddy?” Lance asked, leaning forward to get a full look at Keith. At the soft curve of his hair over his forehead, at the lush eyelashes that looked like they’d been drawn in with smudged charcoal, at the gentle line of his nose.

 

“I’m good,” Keith answered, distantly. Like his attention was back on the moon of Xennerac that they’d just lifted off of.

 

Lance kind of hoped it was. On their mission there Lance had shot a Galra sentry bot straight through its head from at least eighty yards. He knew Keith had seen him do it too, because he’d granted him a flash of a smirk before driving his sword straight through the chest of another.

 

“Seriously, dude,” Lance said. “I can tell something’s got you down lately. Wanna talk about it?”

 

Somewhere in the course of all this intergalactic bullshit that they were involved in, Keith had come to consider Lance as a friend. Lance knew that, even if you’d have had to pry the admission of that out of both of them with a crowbar. Keith trusted Lance to protect his open back in a fight. Keith shared words with Lance like, “I don’t know what I’m doing,” and, “Can you help me out here?” Keith sat down next to Lance at dinner and let Lance slump on him when Lance was tired and traded sharp remarks with him, drained of their venom. Maybe Keith would grant him a disclosure of emotion.

 

But given who that emotion was likely about, maybe not.

 

“Not really,” answered Keith. Predictable.

 

“Alright,” Lance said, stretching casually. “Well, if you need anything, I’m here.”

 

“How’s Shiro?” Keith blurted.

 

There it was.

 

“I mean.” Keith hesitated, backtracked, and finally looked up at Lance. “Is he okay? Does it seem like he’s getting better? Does it really help?”

 

“Does what really help?” Lance asked, just to see the way Keith’s eyebrows hopped up and his face colored at the question. Lance laughed. “I’m just messing with you, dude. Yeah, it helps.”

 

“Good,” Keith said, facing forward again, looking off in the direction of the opposite wall. “That’s good.”

 

“Yep,” Lance replied, drawn-out and low, eyes still on Keith. “Didn’t look like anyone else was gonna volunteer to do it, so I decided to take one for the team.”

 

The line of Keith’s jaw hardened at that.

 

“Anyway, I’m pretty good at what I do, so,” Lance said.

 

He wasn’t sure if he was trying to draw out a laugh or just tug at Keith’s attention, but either would’ve satisfied him. His prayers were answered by the hint of a sneer, and then Keith turned back to him, openly appraising. Lance went immediately warm under his roving gaze.

 

“Somehow I doubt you’re as good as you think you are,” Keith said. “But if you are, I’m glad Shiro has that.”

 

Lance was too busy trying to remember how to form words without choking on his own spit, so it took him a moment to formulate a reply. “Well you’re definitely not any better!”

 

Keith laughed, pushing himself to his feet. “How would you know?”

 

_Let’s duke it out. You, me. Bed. Now._

 

The words were almost there, but he snapped his mouth closed around them. Not here, not now. Not like this.

 

“Catch you on the training deck,” Keith tossed over his shoulder as he started up the stairs and towards the door. Lance tracked the swing of his hips with his eyes.

 

“Yeah, see ya,” Lance replied.

 

The door slid open, but Keith hesitated in the opening before swiveling to look at Lance again.

 

“Oh, and Lance?” he said.

 

Lance raised an eyebrow.

 

“Don’t you dare hurt him. He’s been through enough.”

 

Lance opened his mouth, but the door slid shut behind Keith.

 

* * *

 

Shiro first kissed Lance up against the inside of Lance’s bedroom door, right where he’d pinned him and thrown a knee between the spread of his legs. Lance weakened, melted, at the first contact of lips, clinging to Shiro with desperate hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt. If Shiro had known that was all it took to steal the fight out of him he would’ve done it much sooner.

 

He _should’ve_ done this much sooner, he realized, as Lance’s tongue slipped into his mouth. Shiro’s own met it eagerly, and Lance retreated to tug on Shiro’s bottom lip with his teeth, playful, seductive. If Shiro had been made hard with something from within before, now his arousal was a reaction to outside stimuli.

 

Shiro tugged away with a hint of embarrassment. He wasn’t really sure if that was part of the agreement or not, and though Lance had been enthusiastic about reciprocating, Shiro looked down to judge Lance’s state. Still boxed in by his arms, Lance’s head was tipped back against the door, panting softly from between parted lips, face a little pinker than it had been before they’d entered the room together. Shiro nearly stepped back to let him go, but a smirk fitted itself against Lance’s features, and then he sprung up again and caught Shiro by the mouth.

 

* * *

 

Lance’s face was buried in the pillow. His ass, filled. His shoulder blades bisected by the push of Shiro’s hand. His skin, smooth and begging for company. His legs shook just outside of Shiro’s own with each thrust. Shiro noticed.

 

“Come here,” he said, drawing to a stop, which his body advised him not to do with a litany of desperate screaming from his nerves. Shiro had grown good at ignoring temptation, though. He held himself still.

 

“What?” Lance slurred into the pillow.

 

“Come here,” said Shiro, and pulled out. His both hands went to Lance’s hips and flipped them like a pancake.

 

Lance’s eyes were glazed over but the troubled pull of his lips and his eyebrows announced his displeasure with the lack of cock inside of him. His bangs were attached to his forehead in drenched curls. He lifted his pelvis in a brazen show of impatience. Shiro looped his arms around the other side of his spine and pulled up and in, supporting Lance’s weight as he flopped in his hold, and settled him into his lap. Lance caught on and wriggled back onto Shiro’s cock.

 

Shiro drew in close. He pressed his forehead to Lance’s sweaty one, and acquainted himself well with Lance’s prostate, and Lance’s eyes.

 

* * *

 

Lance laughed, and Shiro laughed, and their laughter layered on top of each other until Lance managed to hit Shiro in the face with his pillow. That should show him. _No one_ tickles Lance McClain and gets away with it.

 

Shiro went instantly, alarmingly still, and Lance jerked back, yanking the pillow away, scared that he had hurt or spooked him. But the instant he did, Shiro lunged. Tackling Lance to the surface of the mattress he settled his weight on top of him and mercilessly attacked Lance’s sides until Lance was squealing and howling.

 

“I give up! I give up!” Lance gasped out, so Shiro collapsed his full weight onto Lance. Lance wheezed a laugh, and it wasn’t until that moment that he remembered they were both still naked, though clean and sated. When Shiro puffed out a chuckle against his shoulder, he found it didn’t matter, even when he scrabbled futilely against Shiro’s chest to escape.

 

And Lance kept laughing, until his gut ached with it.

 

* * *

 

 

Lance turned to crawl away across the bed, flashing an alluring glance over his shoulder. Shiro snapped at the bait, darting forward, arms closing around Lance’s waist like a crocodile’s jaws. He tugged Lance back and nuzzled into the skin stretched over his collarbone, settling down into the sheets, their bodies pressed together.

 

* * *

 

Shiro watched from under heavy eyelids as Lance sighed deeply and braced a hand against the bed to push himself into a sit. From the strength he was ostensibly drawing together, his body weight seemed too much for his spindly arm to support. On instinct, Shiro’s left hand shot out and snagged a wrist in its grip.

 

“Hm?” Lance said, peeking at Shiro between languid blinks. It’d been a long day, and Shiro had just thrust steadily into him until he’d screamed, so it was no wonder he seemed reluctant to be anything but horizontal.

 

“You’re tired, right?” Shiro asked. “Stay here.”

 

The hazy light in Lance’s eyes sharpened into something alert. “Are you sure?”

 

“Yeah,” said Shiro, swallowing his nerves. He opened his arms, giving Lance the option to settle himself into them. He told himself he wouldn’t be hurt if Lance decided not to take it. He wanted to offer, just to be welcoming.

 

But Lance did take it. Gaze softening again, he rolled towards Shiro, into his waiting arms, and though he didn’t exactly push himself up against Shiro’s chest, he was close enough that Shiro could feel his humid breath on his skin. Warmth burst on the inside of Shiro’s ribcage like a sunrise touching first light onto the world.

 

When he woke up in the morning, his legs were tangled between Lance’s, and Lance drooled on his arm, and Shiro couldn’t help but run the pad of his thumb over Lance’s bottom lip.

 

* * *

 

The Castle-ship was quiet, dark in all places except where starshine hit. Dazed, disoriented, Shiro blinked through the black until he had a visual formed of what had woken him: a swath of disheveled hair, a head in motion, a mouth, spun grayscale in the darkness, lowering around his cock.

 

“Come here,” Shiro said groggily, and met the eyes that flashed up mischievous towards him with a languid blink.

 

Lance, ever-obedient to his leader, reshuffled, and twisted his body. He still had all his desired access to Shiro’s cock, but crouched over him this way now Shiro had an excellent view and could reach him with his mouth too.

 

Shiro knew Lance was expecting him to part his lips for his cock. Which is exactly why he instead curled up, grabbed the cheeks of Lance’s ass in his hands, parted them, and ran the flat of his tongue over what he found there.

 

The sound that Lance made in response was infinitely more energizing than any amount of sleep that Shiro was losing out on by doing this.

 

* * *

 

All he’d wanted was a glass of water, but Keith regretted having biological needs the moment he walked into the kitchen. He pulled up short in the doorway and didn’t bother biting back the flood of discontent that filled his mouth like saliva.

 

Their backs were turned to him, braced together at the shoulders, two construction beams holding each other up. Heads turned in close, Lance laughed quietly at something Shiro was saying, and kept saying, even as he worked on whatever food product sat before them on the counter. Lance had forgone a shirt. His pajama pants rested low on his hips and from their opening sprouted a defined spine and jutting hips, lending support to a long, lean torso. The skin stretched across Lance’s back was marred with few, light scars, the remains of a burn here or there, but looked aggravatingly smooth regardless. Only an incriminating dark splotch at the junction of his neck and his shoulder forced a frown onto Keith’s face.

 

Shiro, meanwhile, was as clothed as he always was, but upon taking a step back from his kitchen creation he rested a hand on the small of Lance’s back. The movement was so fluid and automatic that Keith wondered if it had been accidental for a moment, until Lance’s lack of surprise told him it was at least welcomed, if not usual.

 

Keith would’ve slammed the door behind him if Altean technology had the capacity. Instead his footsteps were deliberate and loud. He tried not to notice if this gained him Shiro and Lance’s attention or not, but in his peripherals he watched them break apart and look at him.

 

“Oh, hey, mullet,” Lance greeted. “How’s it going?”

 

“Fine,” Keith said, grabbing a water pack out of the refrigeration system. This door he _could_ slam, and he did. “Sorry for disturbing you.”

 

“Keith.” Shiro used his disappointed leader voice, but the underlying threads shook. “You weren’t disturbing anyone.”

 

Keith gave only a flippant grunt in response before walking out of the kitchen. Back in his room he ended up pouring the entire water pack over his head, feeling petty, ashamed, and alone.

 

* * *

 

Lance was flat on his back on the couch drifting somewhere between sleep and hazy wakefulness when Keith came into the room. He carried in a tablet but even after he sat across from Lance with barely a nod in greeting he didn’t turn it on or even pretend to have an interest in it, instead setting it flat on the couch to his right. After that he folded his arms across his chest, dropped his back against the seat, and tucked his chin towards his chest in proper brooding posture.

 

“Hey, man,” Lance called, Keith’s presence, as always, rousing him to awareness.

 

Keith blinked at him, eyes empty, before replying. “Hey. Napping?”

 

“Not quite,” Lance replied. “How’re you feeling after crashing into that asteroid this morning?”

 

Keith bristled, and it was worth it to drag some sort of emotion other than quiet yearning out of him. “That was _your_ fault. When you froze it you changed its trajectory.”

 

Now, Lance wouldn’t necessarily say it had been his _fault_ but the trajectory-changing was a truth. He had expected Keith to dodge it easily, which had made the crash that he witnessed out of the corner of his eye both alarming and uproariously funny. It didn’t cause any damage to him or his lion, so Lance didn’t feel bad about having a good chuckle over it, except that he knew the entire ordeal was a product of Keith’s current constant distraction.

 

Which _was_ , actually, Lance’s fault.

 

“Not my fault I’m a better pilot than you,” Lance said with a shrug. He didn’t feel bad about the dig because he was aware that the both of them knew it wasn’t true. “But really, you feeling okay?”

 

“I’m fine,” Keith huffed, shutting back down into brood mode.

 

Lance decided to count to thirty before saying anything else. A little bit because Keith deserved some slack sometimes and no one seemed willing to give it to him. A little because Lance felt like he was peering over a precipice, waiting for something to come push him over.

 

He got to twenty-three.

 

“What’s he like?” Keith asked, quietly.

 

“Huh?” Lance squawked.

 

Keith appeared reluctant. “In bed, I mean.”

 

“Who? Shiro?” Lance asked. “You really wanna know?” Lance already knew the answer to that. The question he was really asking was, _Do you really want to hear it from me_. “Didn’t you say he was like a brother to you? He told me that.”

 

Shiro had confided that in Lance. They’d been lying in bed side-by-side, eyes on the ceiling in the hazy aftermath of their orgasms. Their shoulders brushed together as they chatted contentedly, the heat radiating off Shiro calming Lance, soothing him. The way his splash of white hair was visible in Lance’s peripherals gave him the feeling that this bed was home and made his chest fill with something near-overwhelming in the potential it had to make him burst. This was not the feeling he had expected, but he welcomed it with ease. He wasn’t going to overthink it now.

 

Not now, not when the conversation had rolled naturally around to the topic of a dark-haired spitfire, which seemed inevitable, given the conversation’s participants. Their praises and admiration were thinly-veiled, as basic appreciation for a teammate and a friend on Shiro’s side and derisive comments on Lance’s. But in that moment Lance had felt a sense of camaraderie well up with Shiro, beyond the physical and even emotional bond they shared. There was no mistaking the raw way Shiro spoke about Keith as anything other than a reflection of the things that tugged at Lance’s own heart.

 

But then Shiro had sighed. “He said I’m like a brother to him.”

 

Lance couldn’t get the way Shiro’s voice had snagged and torn on that statement out of his head.

 

So he looked at Keith curiously now. Because those words and Keith’s actions seemed to be in direct conflict with each other.

 

“I did say that,” Keith said. “But that’s only…part of it.”

 

Contrary to popular belief, Lance could read between the lines. That was as close to a confession of Keith’s true feelings that he was ever going to get, he supposed.

 

“Anyway. Yeah. I wanna know,” Keith said quietly, and his lack of eye contact betrayed how much it meant to him.

 

“Hm. Well,” Lance started, stretching out his arms over his head. He sighed. “He’s really gentle. Caring. Even when he’s in pain because of his weird alien thing he’s always checking to make sure I’m okay.”

 

“Oh,” was Keith’s response. “That’s…nice.”

 

He still didn’t look at Lance. He instead looked off towards the opposite wall. Lance knew there was nothing there worth noting, so the things Keith must be seeing were probably in his own head.

 

* * *

 

“Shiro?”

 

Pidge’s tone was the loose desert sand. Shiro was liable to slip on it. She had her eyes narrowed at him to boot.

 

“What’s up?” he replied, settling down across the dining room table from her. It was the midnight equivalent of whatever planet they were on, which could potentially explain the lack of others in the public space. He tried not to feel like Pidge had waited for a moment such as this to say whatever she was about to, but he couldn’t as soon as she opened her mouth.

 

“I don’t mean to pry, but,” she said in a tone that betrayed her intent to do just that, “when was the last time you had one of your…‘attacks’?”

 

Shiro glanced to the side and tapped a finger against his chin. Discussing this sort of thing with the team in a detached, informational sort of way had ceased to fluster him. They had _so many_ questions, out of concern, of course. “Maybe a week ago?” he guessed. He tried to recall the feeling of clenching in his thighs and the scorching heat that burned at his stomach, but the ghost of it was utterly impalpable.

 

“Is that usual?” Pidge asked.

 

“No,” Shiro said upon mulling it over. “It’s been slowing down, I think. That’s good, right?”

 

“That’s good,” Pidge agreed, though an unusual emphasis led Shiro to believe that something else was _not_ good. She didn’t leave him guessing for long. “How come I saw you and Lance leaving your room together this morning, then?”

 

Shiro’s heart rate skyrocketed.

 

“What, did you think no one would notice?” Pidge asked.

 

“No, I just….” Shiro frowned. “I haven’t thought about it that much. I’ve been busy with other things.”

 

It was a weird habit to fall into, Shiro realized. Despite having been a hormonal teenager at some point or another Shiro was aware that you don’t just sleep with people because they exist. At some point a line had been crossed, and though Shiro couldn’t pinpoint the particular moment he’d decided to have sex with Lance even though he didn’t need to, out of enjoyment, he could suddenly feel the waters of the repercussions of it rising around him.

 

He was a leader. The weapon that he used to fight depended on the harmony of its five wielders. Here was a predicament: he battled daily for the universe’s survival.

 

He didn’t want to stop.

 

Would he ever tell Lance that? Maybe if Lance was dying in his arms. Maybe if Lance had suffered a laser gun shot clean through the chest Shiro might lean down, brush his lips against his forehead and admit something cloying and dramatic from behind tear-filled eyes. If the thought seems morbid it should be known that all of Shiro’s were, faced with their very real likelihood on a regular basis. It wasn’t the first time Shiro had had a thought like that about a teammate and he knew it wouldn’t be the last.

 

In the meantime, as long as Lance was giving off the impression that his pickup lines would still be around tomorrow, Shiro’s mouth would stay firmly shut on the subject. Lance didn’t need to know his feelings. This went far beyond the matter of Shiro being embarrassed by how he felt, or afraid of rejection, though the acknowledgement of those both as factors made something churn uncomfortably in Shiro’s gut. He preferred to overlook those to focus on the truly unyielding, insurmountable fact. He was in a war.

 

Lance held no interest in him anyway, so it was moot. Lance’s needs were bodily and his intentions were simple. He only wanted to help Shiro, or to use him for sex.

 

“I’m not going to get involved,” Pidge said. “But have some awareness, Shiro. Come on.”

 

“I’ll be careful,” Shiro promised.

 

Pidge raised her eyebrows at him.

 

And as much as Shiro playfully resented it in that moment, she was right to. Not twelve hours later found him on his knees, praying to the gods of Lance’s body.

 

* * *

 

_“Shiro, you’re feeling better, aren’t you? Why don’t you go with Keith?”_

 

Shiro had a gut feeling the moment those words left Allura’s mouth that he would come to rue them, but he couldn’t know how quite yet. They made sense. The mission Keith was going on was just as diplomatic as it had the potential to be physically dangerous, and Keith’s tact wasn’t lacking so much as simply nonexistent. The only reason Keith was picked for this mission at all was that the planet he was being sent to was speckled with innumerable volcanoes that erupted frequently and without warning, and Keith’s handling of the Red Lion was still second to none. Meanwhile, the other paladins were checking in with bigger force on the other inhabited planet in this system, which was suspected to be Lotor-loyal.

 

The Galra battle cruisers in the area had already been cleaned out, and the planet that Shiro and Keith were to visit was innocuous and free of traps, as far as Shiro could tell. Its residents had sent out a distress signal (verified and cross-checked) when the neighboring planet had fallen under Galra command, and Voltron had arrived just as the Galra were beginning to set up base here. The idea was to root out any last Galra on this planet and then solidify the government’s loyalty to Voltron, which would perhaps encourage the next planet over to do the same.

 

The mission was straightforward. Shiro knew that under normal circumstances, he and Keith could easily handle something like this. They could watch each other’s backs in a fight and Keith’s aggressive negotiating style was a good counterbalance to Shiro’s firm-but-overgenerous diplomacy. Under normal circumstances. These were, in fact, not normal circumstances.

 

They met first with the leadership of the planet. Shiro’s grasp on its governmental workings was loose at best, but he was careful not to offend what appeared to be an extended but hivemind-like oligarchy by calling their ruling methods into question. All it took was a hand on Keith’s elbow and he was quiet as well. The initial meeting went smoothly, and their only request was a raid of what appeared to be a Galra outpost constructed at a remote pole of their planet.

 

Keith said he could handle it alone, but Shiro insisted on going as backup. They politely refused the planetary government’s offer of additional troops, knowing that it would just slow them down, and asked them to redirect their efforts to the war in general instead. If Voltron could keep them safe, they could support Voltron. It was the symbiotic relationship that most planets based their alliance on and though it wasn’t perfect, Shiro was glad to sign the documents.

 

There were two kinds of difficult that an average planetside mission could be: physically taxing or emotionally demanding. Usually it was one or the other. On an unlucky day, both. This one wasn’t difficult physically at all. Keith went in, fire ray blazing, and they ransacked the apparently abandoned outpost before razing it to the ground. So when they returned to the planet’s capital and were informed that a party was being organized in their honor for that evening, Shiro knew immediately which sort of mission this would be.

 

Lance groaned and rolled his eyes from his pilot’s seat when Shiro and Keith called the rest of the team to inform them of their evening’s plans.

 

“How come they get to relax and we’re out here fighting off Galra troops?” Lance whined.

 

“Diplomacy is part of our job too, Lance,” Keith was quick to remind him. But Shiro could tell from the twitching of his fingers that he would’ve happily traded duties with Lance.

 

So Shiro and Keith prepared for their evening. Alone in his assigned chambers, Shiro steeled himself for a long night.

 

* * *

 

Keith was probably more than one drink in, and very obviously in a much better mood for it.

 

Shiro was always a bit hesitant to ingest anything an alien offered him, especially that which was known for its physiological chemistry-altering properties. He wouldn’t ever forget the time on Xuna when Lance had taken a drug which reportedly made those who consumed it more attractive to the other genders of the planet. Weird morality concerns about such a thing aside, instead of ending up in an alien’s bed that evening Lance earned himself a solid night in the healing pod as the rest of the team anxious waited for the swelling of his calves and his blood pressure to go down. Similarly, there had been the mess on Mollov, caused by a fermented substance that went down like melted butter but was essentially, Shiro heard later as his head hung over a toilet, the equivalent of 200-proof alcohol. Having learned his lesson a few times over, Shiro had his reservations about alien celebratory beverages.

 

At least now, Shiro was pretty sure that Keith wasn’t drunk. He was merely loose. That seemed to be a good descriptor for the way he’d spread out to claim the backs of the chairs on either side of him with his arms, the sprawl of his lean legs, the way his head tipped back and to the side. He looked like a prince, crowned with the blue glow of alien trees. No one sat directly on either side of him but he was engaged in friendly chitchat with an alien adjacent and one across the table. The drinks here were served in wide, shallow bowls that gave view to tiny, shimmering, star-shaped seeds that sunk to the bottom. Shiro had been told that you were supposed to eat those after finishing the drink, but he had yet to bring his bowl to his lips and so he didn’t know the flavor.

 

Keith seemed to be enjoying himself, so Shiro shouldn’t be drinking anyway. One of them could play nice. The other had to be prepared for an emergency. Shiro didn’t mind the responsible role, but something in the way Keith held himself right now made Shiro want to drop his guard and settle next to him for a little while and let his own body fall loose like that, too. More than that, he gave into the temptation of acknowledging the part of him that always yearned to experience Keith’s fire firsthand through his skin.

 

He allowed himself one of those desires, at least. He approached Keith, whose face broke into a lazy smile when he spotted him. Dropping his arm from the back of the chair to his right, Keith gave it an invitational pat. Shiro sat down.

 

His intention had been to politely merge into the conversation but as soon as he was there, the two aliens might’ve secretly and silently dropped off into a nearby volcano for the attention Keith gave them.

 

“Did you drink anything yet?” Keith asked, jerking his head towards the table. His own bowl was half-drained, and Shiro had definitely seen it refilled at least once. On the other hand, Shiro’s, which he had brought to the table, was so full that he’d accidentally tipped some of the clear liquid onto to ground on his way over here.

 

“Nah,” Shiro replied. “I’ll stay sober so you can drink.”

 

Something sharpened in Keith’s gaze, and he straightened up so he could lean closer to Shiro. “I was about to cut myself off,” he said.

 

Shiro laughed. “That drunk already?”

 

“No,” Keith replied. “I want to stop drinking so you can feel comfortable and relax.”

 

There was still something untethered about him that alerted Shiro to the idea that Keith might not be sober _enough_. But he’d borne witness to the entire range of Keith’s alcohol exposure, from “barely had a sip and judgingly watching Lance make a fool of himself on the dance floor” to “starfished on the ground with dried vomit on his shoes.” This was hardly into tipsy, if Shiro was honest with himself, the first few draughts just working to remove the weight from Keith’s shoulders that he usually carried around with him.

 

And now this mostly-sober man was looking at Shiro with his otherworldly indigo doe eyes and seeing all the burdens that Shiro himself bore, and deciding that he needed a break.

 

“It’s fine, Keith,” Shiro said. “Keep having fun.”

 

“I’d have more fun if you were having fun,” was Keith’s petulant response.

 

Shiro humored him with a chuckle and reached over to ruffle his hair. Keith ducked away from it, but not without a smile touching his lips.

 

“I’m the leader,” Shiro reminded him, letting his hand fall back to his lap. “Gotta be responsible.”

 

That was the wrong thing to say to Keith. He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t remember putting me in charge? I’ll be the responsible one here.”

 

Shiro remembered very well putting him in charge. He remembered the protests of it, too. “You only seem to want to accept that when it involves getting me drunk.”

 

“If that’s what it takes,” Keith replied good-naturedly. He then leaned forward and slid his bowl closer to the edge of the table, in front of Shiro. He looked up from under thick eyelashes and smiled. “Come on, trust me, Shiro.”

 

Shiro sighed. Then, he reached for the bowl. The liquid inside swirled appetizingly. He looked back towards Keith, and without breaking eye contact, raised the bowl to his lips.

 

A first domino, tipped. This, in many ways, was the beginning of the end.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wanna take this opportunity to thank my shklance gc. i know i'm not around much these days but the love and support i get from them always makes me so happy. they also were the first ones to read this fic when i started writing it and they gave me some great feedback. it's only here because of them!

To be honest, it was a pleasure to spoil Shiro.

 

Keith understood where Lance’s desire to help Shiro through his “attacks” had stemmed from with such a twinge in his chest that it made him breathless. There was something about watching the stress sap out of Shiro that was more rewarding than any drunken evening Keith could’ve lived. Shiro spent his every waking moment in the service of others, and didn’t get very many sleeping ones. To say that Keith worried about Shiro’s well-being was like saying that Keith was a pilot; it neither encompassed the enormity or depth of the issue. What Keith wanted to provide to Shiro was happiness and security, at so many different levels. In his day-to-day life that manifested as fighting a war.

 

Tonight, that meant refilling Shiro’s bowl and putting a hand over his to steady his arm as he brought it to his mouth. Some liquid sloshed over the side anyway. Shiro leveled it a surprised glance before barking a laugh at it.

 

“Sloppy,” he berated himself, thrilled, like he was back at the Garrison and could ask an unsuspecting underclassman to wipe a spilled beer off the floor for him. He punctuated it with another slug of clear liquid.

 

His face was glowing the healthiest pink Keith had ever seen it. It looked like Shiro had weathered a terrible sunburn, but neither of them had seen the direct light of a star in some days. The redness lit up his whole face and left his scar highlighted.

 

“Is your friend meant to become that color?” a passing local had asked in giggly alarm.

 

“He’s Japanese,” Keith had replied, as though they would have understood. They seemed to take it as a satisfying explanation because they continued teetering on their way.

 

Shiro was wholly involved in conversation with the aliens sitting to their right, and Keith was wholly involved in Shiro. Despite what he had promised, Keith hadn’t actually cut himself off. He wasn’t drunk. He was certainly sober enough to handle himself if something went wrong. (He shuddered remembering the disaster on Hukkaan where a Galra fleet attacked just as he’d finished a very sacred rite involving a series of hallucinogens with the locals. It turned out he could drive Red impaired just fine, but his firing aim was a little more of an issue.) Right now, though, Keith felt safe enough to be a little tipsy. And if being tipsy meant being unable to take his eyes off Shiro then that was just something he would have to deal with.

 

Keith was about to offer him water when this planet’s ruling parliament or council or whatever they called themselves stood and announced that the festivities for the evening were coming to a close. Almost immediately a pair of incongruously sedate aliens appeared at Keith’s side to return him and Shiro to their lodgings.

 

Shiro wobbled as he stood. His hand came down on Keith’s shoulder to steady himself, and warmth emanated from the contact point until it felt connected to Keith’s heart like a direct electric line. This wasn’t an unusual happening by any stretch of the imagination so Keith stood firm for Shiro’s sake.

 

“Sorry,” Shiro laughed, almost knocking into Keith fully as he made to stand independently.

 

“I’ve got you,” Keith replied, offering an arm, feigning impassivity.

 

As though unaware of it, already looking to follow after the aliens, Shiro grabbed it mid-forearm and swung it between them, like it was a child’s hand offered instead of a support. Keith had no complaints. Shiro seemed in high spirits, and the way he set forth after the aliens was more reminiscent of a puppy’s plodding than the strong and collected stride he was used to. It brought a smile to Keith’s face, even as he was yanked along after.

 

The rooms they were led to were lavish. A perk of being the saviors of the universe, Keith supposed. All the structures here were made from an extensive network of smooth-walled, perfectly round lava tunnels, carved into the igneous rock of the mountains, but lit brightly with glimmering crystal against the dark walls. Their two rooms were high-ceilinged caverns, round-edged and floored in bright lush carpeting. Hollows carved out of the floor and lined with luxuriant blankets and pillows served as a bed. It was far more than Keith ever really needed.

 

Keith tried to help Shiro into his room, but Shiro plowed onwards until he was entering Keith’s.

 

“Shiro,” Keith protested half-heartedly.

 

“I’m not tired yet,” Shiro replied.

 

And that’s how Keith knew Shiro was positively plastered. He was choosing time with Keith over something productive, like sleep.

 

After tripping out of his shoes, Shiro invited himself to sit at the edge of the dip in the floor that would eventually serve as Keith’s bed, and spread himself into a wide sit, his arms propping him up behind him and his feet kicking at Keith’s bedding. Keith watched him for a moment, shocked into stillness by his own delight at seeing Shiro so carefree, and then shifted himself into motion with the reminder that Shiro needed water.

 

He brought him a glass of what he assumed was water from a pitcher and watched as Shiro proceeded to spill half of it on Keith’s pillows. Shiro laughed, enthralled by his own shortcomings, and swayed as he did it.

 

Keith sat beside him. Maybe closer than he would have if they were both sober, but he was rewarded by the weight of Shiro’s body against his shoulder as he slumped into him. It was Keith’s turn to laugh, on a quiet little breath, as Shiro unbalanced him and nearly sent him onto the floor. Here and now, he could almost pretend this was real. That being a support to Shiro was an actual role he played in his life. That Shiro depended on him, and that Shiro needed him, and that Shiro would never leave him. That Shiro was capable of having feelings for him.

 

“Doing okay?” Keith asked.

 

“Yeah,” Shiro replied, and his breath brushed across Keith’s neck. “Thanks for taking care of me.”

 

_Always_ , Keith thought. “Did you have fun?” Keith said.

 

Shiro hummed his affirmative and went peacefully quiet for a long moment. Keith didn’t mind. He was physically supporting Shiro, and he would continue to forever, as long as Shiro would have him. His weight was a reminder that he was here, and he was alive, and that was Keith’s first priority. Keith allowed himself to smile, and basked in Shiro’s warmth.

 

Shiro jerked away from him as if he’d been stabbed.

 

“Shiro?” Keith asked.

 

Shiro’s eyes had grown wide and his breathing heavy. He pushed himself to an unsteady stand with his mechanical arm, an unbalanced movement different from his usual fluid grace, and teetered on his feet. Keith quickly stood as well, and hurried to face him. His forehead shone with sweat.

 

“What’s wrong?” Keith asked.

 

Once he heard the reply, he knew it was a testament to the alcohol that he was answered at all.

 

“I think I’m…,” Shiro said, quietly. “I’m being affected by the bacteria….”

 

Keith’s chest clenched.

 

“I thought you were better,” he said.

 

“I did too,” Shiro replied, eyes downcast. But Keith could see it in him. The discomfort straining at his mouth, the tension in his shoulders. Keith would do anything to ease that.

 

“Shiro,” he said.

 

They locked eyes, and Shiro’s gaze was dark and leveled. All the traces of his intoxicated playfulness had evaporated in the midst of the heat that seemed to transfer to Keith through eye contact convection. He was nowhere near sober enough for this—neither of them were—but as the idea that they could easily make this mistake right now settled its weighty reality in Keith’s buzzing thoughts it only spread a white-hot spark through his chest.

 

“Does it hurt?” Keith asked, and he didn’t know when he had approved his voice to drop so low.

 

Shiro was stock still for a moment, as though making a decision, as though there was still a decision that could be made. Then, he nodded.

 

“I need—,” Shiro said, then choked on the rest of his sentence. He swallowed loudly, his eyes flickering away, then immediately back to Keith as if he couldn’t not look at him. Keith didn’t miss the twitch of his fingers.

 

Keith’s next words were inevitable at this point.

 

“Let me help you,” he said.

 

Shiro shut his eyes. He swayed in some invisible wind, and his forehead creased, then smoothed, then creased again. Some great war was being waged in his mind, but when he opened his eyes, he saw Keith, and when he saw Keith, he looked at nothing else.

 

“Okay,” he said, more of a sigh of relief than a word.

 

A deep breath was needed to steel himself, and then Keith rested both palms flat against Shiro’s chest. His original purpose in this had been to steady himself, to steady Shiro, but the cliff face of Shiro’s chest proved much more disorienting than it looked. Keith flushed hard with how strong his urges wanted to boil him alive, and carnal interest left his clothes too itchy against his skin. Against the heel of Keith’s right palm he felt a frantic rhythm, the contraction-expansion that kept Shiro alive reacting to his presence. Something filled the inside of Keith’s ribcage like helium inside a balloon.

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Shiro breathed, and Keith had barely touched him.

 

From there he slid his hands up slowly. Shiro had shut his eyes again at some point, but Keith didn’t need his vision. He took his time exploring the space over his pectorals, then tipping over his collarbones, creeping over his trapezius muscles, until he could comfortably join his hands at the back of Shiro’s neck and tug him down.

 

They didn’t make contact. Keith hesitated with mere inches left, and Shiro’s eyes flew open at the proximity. Keith loved those eyes, and their hurricane gray. How looking into them Keith felt like he was tucked into the center of the storm. Shiro was the force that accelerated Keith. That he could look at Keith with a want so raw and so soft twisted Keith’s insides to sand. Shiro pushed his left hand into Keith’s hair at the back of his skull. His right, he rested on the side of Keith’s torso.

 

“I’m going to kiss you,” Keith warned.

 

Shiro groaned from deep in his chest, a primal, yearning thing. “ _Please_.”

 

Keith could relate to the impatience there, so he surged up.

 

It was too much at first, too rough. Shiro was drunk and unrefined. Keith was overwhelmed by the very concept of what he was doing, which blotted out physical sensation for a dizzy minute. Close-mouthed, they fell together too hard like a comet crashing to Earth. But then Shiro instinctively stepped closer and shifted. Keith tilted his head back, suddenly centering himself as Shiro bore down on him. They slotted together, and an unintentional sigh allowed Shiro access to the inside of Keith’s mouth.

 

He didn’t waste the opportunity. His tongue pried into Keith before Keith had a chance to catch his breath, but he wasn’t complaining. The push of it against his own tongue made him weak, and his fingers sunk into the muscle on the back of Shiro’s neck to try and regain some semblance of control. Shiro just huffed a chuckle against him and continued his gentle sweep of Keith’s mouth.

 

Keith wanted more. He shifted in closer, until he could feel the brush of Shiro’s body against his. He closed his teeth around Shiro’s tongue and gave it a suck. Shiro’s fingers tightened at his waist, so Keith did it again. Shiro pressed in farther, and depleted the distance between them until Keith’s entire body was pressed to Shiro’s front. He was hot, and solid like a tree trunk, and what he was doing with his tongue made sparks fly behind Keith’s closed eyes.

 

He only broke it off to pull Shiro by the arm down into the bedding. He had the forethought to flip over the wet pillow, but before he could truly orient himself again Shiro was on him, pinning him down into the nest of blankets and pillows. They landed together in a desperate heap, limbs clawing at each other to get closer. Shiro enveloped Keith entirely under his bulk and his weight. Shiro straddled his legs, and Keith propped one up in response, and when Keith’s thigh dragged against the thick hardness in the front of Shiro’s pants they both moaned. Before Keith could recover from the life-altering experience of coming into contact with Shiro’s cock, Shiro was pressing kisses against his jawline. Keith squirmed under him, and Shiro breathed a laugh against his throat.

 

“Sensitive?” Shiro asked, voice rough like choppy waters and deep as the the sea which laid beneath. Keith could drown in it. Be pulled under by the current and tossed recklessly and not even care. Let it flood his nostrils, his eyes, his esophagus and his windpipe. Let it fill his lungs until there was no oxygen left. The pressure could crush his body and he would be grateful.

 

And Keith did know that this pressure would crush him. Would he be happy in the morning? Absolutely not, and neither would Shiro. There was no question in Keith’s mind about the relevance of Shiro’s condition to this interaction, how a warm and willing body was a warm and willing body when you were in a tight spot. But presented with the opportunity to taste the inside of Shiro’s mouth Keith would take it, unhesitating, circumstances be damned. And if he got to taste the inside of other parts of his body, he wouldn’t complain about that either.

 

But first, Shiro’s lips on his neck. Shiro’s lips and then Shiro’s teeth, digging into the skin, sucking it between until Keith felt like he’d been stung. It was good though, the faint pain, and it spread with Shiro’s travel along his body. Shiro stretched the collar of his shirt to access his clavicle, and Keith called Shiro’s name unabashedly.

 

“Keith,” Shiro responded sweetly, nosing into the dip of his collarbone. Keith shivered, full-body.

 

“Let me touch you,” Keith begged, gripping fingers into Shiro’s clothing and hauling him back up so that they were face-to-face.

 

Shiro laughed, a saccharine contrast to the desperate atmosphere. “You are touching me,” he said. His smile was dopey and when Keith registered it something in the pit of his gut dropped out like he was flying.

 

“ _More_ ,” Keith growled, and with an impatient yank separated Shiro’s shirt from where it was tucked into his pants. Keith took advantage of the new space to worm his hands up under the tight fabric, and found something worth his attention in the muscles of Shiro’s abdomen.

 

Shiro wanted too. That much was obviously from the way he pressed his palms under Keith’s clothes. They were warm against him, covering more area than he had imagined they would all the times he’d considered what Shiro’s hands would feel like on him. One hand was slightly warmer than the other, one more smooth and the other calloused, but Keith didn’t have the mental capacity to sort his thoughts on this other than that it was _good_. There was a tender care in it. Shiro touched now only to feel, to experience. His hands slid light and exploratory, as over moon rock or meteorite. It vacuumed the air straight from Keith’s lungs.

 

The edge of a calloused thumb brushed against a nipple, and Keith’s spine bent in response. Shiro, visibly delighted by the reaction, pressed the pad of his finger back against it, and when Keith’s hands tightened on Shiro’s body, pinched it between his thumb and his index finger.

 

“ _God_ ,” Keith gasped. “Don’t—”

 

But it was too late for him to tell Shiro not to do anything. Shiro was doing as he pleased, and that apparently meant doing what pleased Keith. Suddenly Shiro’s other hand was at his chest as well, mirroring the motion on the other, and Keith’s head snapped to the side in both a halfhearted effort to hide his reactions and as a reaction in itself.

 

Shiro only took this as an invitation to continue. Before Keith’s short-circuiting brain could catch up to current events Shiro was shoving his shirt up to his throat, baring the pale skin of Keith’s torso. And then, he swooped in, zeroed on his target, and when Shiro’s lips came into contact with Keith’s left nipple the strangled sound that choked its way out of Keith was loud enough to echo back at him from the ceiling.

 

Unfair—the grin that Shiro was wearing when Keith made the mistake of glancing down at him. He was so focused on the swiping of his tongue over the hard nipple that he didn’t notice Keith watching. Watching the way he then flashed his teeth and tenderly, tenderly, fixed them around Keith.

 

It went straight to Keith’s lower body, the reverberation of an earthquake. He was unstable like the plates that made him up were shifting under Shiro’s touch, and the sweet pain of his bite left Keith trembling all over. He could easily lose touch with reality here, with anything other than the way Shiro kissed him gently after tugging with his teeth.

 

But he wasn’t here to have Shiro’s mouth covering his body, as much as the thought made his thighs fall open. He had only landed here because he was meant to be helping Shiro. Shiro’s only intention in touching Keith like this was to return a favor that hadn’t happened yet. Shiro was thoughtful, generous, and kind, but he was only giving Keith his payment for the service he was about to provide. The thought kicked him into drive, and he grappled at Shiro’s chest in an attempt to push Shiro up enough to get his shirt off. Yet Shiro, for all the prior grace he laid out on Keith’s chest, got tangled in the sleeves of his shirt.

 

_He’s drunk_ , Keith was reminded, especially as Shiro laughed from within the folds of it, halfway over his head. The tuft of white hair peeked out over the top as he grappled at the fabric, and Keith’s chest throbbed. But he couldn’t mix these things here. His emotions were ammonia and this physicality was bleach. The resulting mixture would have him dead.

 

He grabbed the shirt and yanked it off Shiro’s arms, and Shiro emerged messy-haired and sweat-slicked, the glow of his face spread down his neck and across his chest. Keith couldn’t tell if it was still from the alcohol at this point, or the situation, or the combination of both. But the color, lively and rosy and organic and real, looked good on Shiro’s grinning face.

 

“Thank you,” he said, settling down on Keith again. Before Keith could respond Shiro sealed their mouths together once more.

 

This time Keith’s exploration of Shiro’s chest was unobstructed. As Shiro sucked Keith’s tongue into his mouth, Keith’s hands ventured over the hard landscape of his body. It was impressive, on a pure objective level, but Keith had never known anyone in his life as physically attractive as Takashi Shirogane. To touch him felt like the velvet ropes at the museum had been taken down just for him.

 

But rejoice; there was more of him to touch. Keith could feel the hard cut of his legs tangling against his own. More than that, the thick bulge between them rested against Keith’s thigh as a tantalizing reminder of why they were here. Keith let his fingers trail down Shiro’s abdomen. He followed the powerful dip of his hipbone. He slid his fingers into the space Shiro’s taut stomach left at the edge of his pants.

 

Keith brushed against cock, and Shiro panted against his lips.

 

Here it was, in his hand. Through Shiro’s pants Keith struggled for a grip. Eventually he gave in and began the highly frustrating process of loosening Shiro’s belt, his buttons and his zipper. Keith didn’t have time for that. He’d had contact with Shiro’s cock and he wanted more, immediately. The thought was heady and all-enveloping, and Keith all but tore Shiro’s button loose and zipper down.

 

His focus had been so single-minded he jolted when his own pants were pushed down from around his waist and a hand circled his own cock. Shiro groaned before Keith’s fingers were even back on him, as though he himself gained physical pleasure from touching Keith. As though he’d had rampaging thoughts about Keith’s naked body himself. As though exposing the parts of Keith that he hid from the world was good for Shiro too.

 

Keith couldn’t entertain those notions for long, but the fleeting hopes were nice. If only there was truth to any of them.

 

But Keith could enjoy the physicality of the situation at any rate. He palmed Shiro again, this time unhampered. He was big, weighty. Hard and shaped in a gentle curve. Different from Keith himself, and exactly what Keith wanted. His desperation for it didn’t abate as he rubbed his open hand down the vein. Instead he was overwhelmed by the ferocious need to feel it more. To have it hit the back of his throat and for it to push painfully deep inside of him.

 

Shiro’s hand flicked over Keith’s crown, and Keith inhaled a shuddering gasp. Keith returned the motion and was surprised to find his palm damp in the process. Shiro was leaking already, and the realization made Keith buck up into Shiro’s hand.

 

“Hey, none of that,” Shiro laughed, and angled his own body to press down against Keith’s and keep him still. His tone was fond and amused, and Keith could almost imagine that this meant something to him.

 

Keith matched his speed to Shiro’s, which was too slow to draw any real response. It felt good anyway, the friction and the pull, and Keith for once didn’t mind the slow pace. The longer they did this, the more time Keith could touch Shiro. He didn’t expect to be allowed to ever again. So he kept it even, at a legato drag, and chased Shiro’s lips to pull him back down into a lazy kiss.

 

Shiro rolled them to their sides, and Keith mentally bemoaned the loss of his weight over him until he realized what Shiro’s intentions were. With the hand that was supporting him up over Keith, he now trailed down Keith’s body, following his spine. He reached the tailbone and hesitated.

 

“Can I?” he asked against Keith’s lips.

 

Keith pressed their mouths together once, twice, before reaching back with his own free hand and guiding Shiro’s down his ass himself.

 

Shiro took a detour to cup Keith’s ass in his hand first. It fit beautifully, at least in Keith’s opinion. Like Shiro’s hand was meant to hold there. The squeeze Shiro gave made his stomach swoop. The possessive sprawl of his fingers as he pulled the cheeks apart had Keith squirming closer. But it was over far too soon as Shiro dipped his hand into the cleft.

 

That was fine, though. It was fine because then Shiro’s finger was tracing the outline of Keith’s hole, slow and utterly unrushed and giving, and both the emotional and physical sensation of that made Keith’s hand stutter over Shiro’s cock. It worsened when Shiro nosed against Keith’s ear, and then nibbled along its shell, all while working his hand over him.

 

Keith couldn’t take much more of this, in any capacity. “Do you have lube?” he demanded.

 

Shiro hummed and the hand disappeared off Keith’s dick. Shiro half sat up and rooted around in his packs until he unearthed what he was looking for. A small bottle, which he brandished at Keith with that same loopy drunken grin.

 

He did. He did have lube. Whatever it was for, it was here. Perhaps because Shiro would want to get himself off in privacy after a long day. Perhaps just because he always happened to have some in his pack. Keith was positive that its presence had no correlation to his own. But it was here. It was here, and soon Shiro would be using it inside of Keith.

 

He wasted no time. Momentarily the tip of a thick finger was petting at Keith’s hole again, and then, slowly, painstakingly, pushing inside. The stretch was thrilling. It was strange, certainly. Something about being up there always felt a little unnatural, or rather just unaccustomed. But Keith had never felt anything quite like Shiro’s fingers reaching into him. The working of his hands was surprisingly methodical for someone so intoxicated, and even as Keith begged for a second, for a third, Shiro was leisurely in his exploration of the inside of Keith’s body.

 

“I’m ready,” Keith babbled against Shiro’s jawline, where he had been leaving suckling kisses. “I’m so ready. Shiro, Shiro, _please_.” He didn’t quite have the brainpower to think it was ironic that he was the one begging when Shiro was the one who needed this.

 

“Okay, Keith, okay,” Shiro finally allowed, and spilled Keith over onto his back again.

 

Shiro crawled between Keith’s legs, and Keith gratefully let him. There were tears gathered at the corners of his eyes from having been stretched so far. From having felt a part of Shiro’s body inside of him. From the view that he was now presented with: Shiro, naked, in his purest form, kneeling between the spread of Keith’s thighs, his own slick cock in hand as he pumped it once, twice, before bowing to center himself and lining up to drive home.

 

The first push of it was bigger than Shiro’s fingers, but the slick of lube let it easily breach the ring of muscle. It was a good pain. It was the pain of Shiro fitting himself into Keith’s being. Keith could endure that, even as Shiro pushed deeper. _Especially_ as Shiro pushed deeper, giving Keith more and more and more of himself.

 

“Hold on,” Keith said from between gritted teeth as Shiro filled him.

 

Shiro peppered kisses to Keith’s nose, to his eyebrows, to his forehead and his chin and to the corners of his mouth. His hand was back on Keith’s flagging erection, bringing it back to attention with long, slow pumps. “Tell me when,” he said into Keith’s bangs.

 

“Okay,” Keith said. “I’m okay.”

 

Shiro rose just enough on his forearms to look down at Keith, and whatever he saw brought a smile to his face. His eyes were glassy with alcohol and lust. His hair was matted to his forehead with sweat. The bright red of his cheeks colored him severely. But his eyes crinkled around the edges and his nose scrunched as if in laughter, and Keith had never felt such a lightness in his chest.

 

And then Shiro started to thrust.

 

The stretch almost immediately gave way to pleasure. Keith raised his calves and wrapped his legs around Shiro’s waist, and Shiro tucked one hand under Keith’s back to keep his angle accessible. The other he looped under Keith’s shoulder blades, so that Shiro could keep himself propped up over Keith’s face as he slid into him again and again and again.

 

“God, Keith,” Shiro praised against the junction of his jaw and his throat. “You’re so tight.”

 

Keith felt the words in his bones. He clung to them for sanity, because otherwise Shiro’s pace was going to knock him senseless. Not because it was fast or rough or driving. Instead it was like he was taking his time to savor every inch of the inside of Keith, again, and again, and again. And it felt like the brink of chaos.

 

He readjusted his hold on Keith and a cry was pushed from Keith’s lungs. God, the sparking of his nerves was violent. Shiro was unrelenting with his attack on Keith’s sanity, on his ability to hold himself together physically and mentally, on his self-control to keep his lips clamped down on the noises that scraped by his vocal chords. Keith wanted to see it himself, their connection, but Shiro’s broad body was in the way, chest-to-chest, Shiro’s mouth sucking dark spots like nebulae into the scar on his shoulder. So instead Keith’s hand wandered down. He dragged it along the inside of his own thigh, and stopped it at their junction, and felt with the frantic pounding of his heart where Shiro stretched him open, where he and Shiro ceased to be two separate people and existed within the same space. The stretch of his own body to accommodate Shiro’s girth was incredible, and along the outside he was so sensitive that it ached.

 

“ _Keith_ ,” Shiro begged, whined, growled, sang. Hearing his own name so reverent in Shiro’s mouth pushed Keith so far along his hips stuttered, shoving back into Shiro’s motions, trying to dig deeper, get more. He was losing control, losing sense of anything except the desperate pursuit of pleasure and the way he felt about Shiro.

 

“Shiro, _Shiro_ , I’m—!” Keith managed, before being yanked under the surface of awareness. The breath was torn out of him on a cry and his vision was replaced by all-consuming white. His head threw back, his spine arched off the bed, and nothing existed except the release that powered through his body, and the feeling of Shiro, deep inside of him.

 

When he regained himself, blinking away his haze and gasping for breath, Shiro was still thrusting, brow furrowed in concentration. Keith, oversensitive and overwhelmed, aching with high pleasure all over, focused his vision on Shiro’s eyes, which were staring right back at him.

 

“ _Keith_ ,” said Shiro as he came, as heat flushed deep into Keith’s body. Keith squirmed at the feeling, the way his body accepted what Shiro had to give him, so deep, so warm. Keith wanted it, wanted it so bad. And he got it.

 

There was a moment of stillness, of breaths catching and slowing, of eye contact that seemed unbreakable. And then, with the same soft quality, came a wet, squelching sound as Shiro pulled out and rolled off Keith. Almost immediately Keith felt the combination of lube and cum leaking out of him, and reached down to catch it, not wanting to get any on the blankets. Shiro, from behind him, swatted his hand away.

 

“What are you…?” Keith asked, half-dazed.

 

“I want to see it,” Shiro said, near a whisper, and poked at Keith’s upper thigh.

 

Keith’s skin caught ablaze. He watched Shiro’s rapt expression as he saw his own come dribble out of Keith’s hole. If Keith didn’t know better, he’d think he seemed proud.

 

But as for Keith, he was grimacing. He went to get up, his body beginning to feel sticky, but Shiro placed a hand on his bare shoulder.

 

“Hold on,” he said, and clambered to his feet and clawed his way unsteadily out of the sleeping pit. From there he made his way to where a stack of linen-like cloth was neatly folded near the door, and took the first piece from the top before drenching it in water. As he went about his tasks he seemed unaware or at least unbothered by his own nakedness.

 

Keith had seen Shiro naked before, but it was in the same capacity that he’d seen Lance or Hunk or any classmate back in the Garrsion who used the locker room showers. Not at his leisure. Not with the time or permission to let his eyes wander and rove. He couldn’t be certain that he actually had those things, but he stole them now as Shiro’s back was turned. Keith skimmed his eyes up the chiseled calves, the thick thighs, to the well-formed ass that Keith now regretted not getting his hands on while he had the opportunity. Shiro had dimples at the small of his back, and his well-built muscles stood out in the shadows cast by the nearby light. Just watching him, despite the ferocity with which he’d _just_ come, Keith felt his cock twitch in interest.

 

Shiro turned, and caught Keith’s eyes. Keith went to avert his gaze in embarrassment, but Shiro smiled wide and happy, and padded back to the hollow in the floor with a dripping wet towel. Keith reached up to take it from him, but instead Shiro crawled back among the pillows and placed the cloth against Keith’s skin.

 

“It’s cool, sorry,” Shiro said when Keith flinched at the contact.

 

“I can—,” Keith started to say, but then Shiro began to rub in tight, soft circles, and Keith melted completely.

 

“I know you can,” Shiro replied, voice downy. He used a hand on Keith’s hip to turn him facedown, and spread the cheeks of his ass with one hand while the other used the cloth to wipe between.

 

He was a little sore there, but more than that, Shiro’s gentle touch had Keith tense. He knew Shiro was the sort of person to do this. But the intimacy of it didn’t match the situation at all. Perhaps it was still the alcohol in Shiro’s system turning him affectionate, but no one wants to clean cum out of someone else’s ass. Keith frowned against the pillow and tried to think of how to make the situation feel normal again.

 

“Are you feeling better?” Keith asked.

 

“Much,” Shiro said. A splat sounded as the linen was tossed aside and landed, still damp, on the stone. This was the part where Shiro went back to his room, then. “It’s the only thing that seems to help.”

 

Keith waited for the cold that had been left on his skin by the water to spread. He waited for the shifting of weight behind him and the footsteps away. He waited for the lights to be turned off and to be left to sleep alone. He waited for this night to fade straight out of Shiro’s memory with the morning sun.

 

Instead what he got was an arm tossed over his torso, a blanket pulled up around his waist, and skin-on-skin contact that had him forgetting how to breathe.

 

“Thank you, Keith,” Shiro said at his ear. His voice was dragging, slurred. Already on his way to sleep, then. Here. _Here_ , in Keith’s bed.

 

Keith turned just in time to see Shiro’s eyes flutter shut. Shiro’s arm kept him tucked against his warm body, into the spaces where their legs could twine together, where Keith could fit his head under Shiro’s chin. Keith couldn’t resist. He slid an arm around Shiro as well, and pressed his face into Shiro’s neck.

 

* * *

 

 

That _wasn’t_ normal alcohol.

 

There was no way. First of all, Shiro had no hangover. Not the slightest twinge of a headache. Not even the beginnings of a stomach roiling. Nothing. For the feeling he had now, he could have gone peacefully to bed at 8 pm last night. Second, all of Shiro’s memories were impressively intact. Every single face-burning, heart-dropping moment, from the moment he’d started drinking to the moment he had grabbed Keith’s naked body and sleepily pressed it against him. Third, out of every experience with alcohol in which Shiro had been sorely tempted to put his hand to Keith’s face and tilt it up so that their lips could meet, last night was the only time he had ever in his life acted on it.

 

And now here he was. Not just in Keith’s room. Not just in Keith’s bed. But in Keith’s arms, which were warm and obstinately clingy. Shiro knew because he’d tried to extract himself but found the grip around him tightening instead with an unconscious moan from the still-dozing Keith, like a body-sized Chinese finger trap. Unfortunately there was no sneaking out of this one in a way that would save both their dignity and allow them to pretend this had never happened.

 

Not that he would do that anyway, as enticing as the idea was. He wanted to make sure that Keith was okay. For Shiro to take advantage of him like that was cruel. Shiro had _known_ that Keith would do anything that Shiro ever asked of him. Anything that he thought might make Shiro happier, or make Shiro’s life more comfortable. Although Keith had been the one to offer, it was Shiro who had been in the predicament. Keith must have felt pressured.

 

Could Shiro bring himself to regret it though? Not in this moment. Keith was breathing hot into his collarbone. The smooth skin of his body felt good on Shiro’s. Keith’s arms were tight around him, and Keith’s face in sleep was peaceful. Those dark eyelashes fluttered with his dreams. His body was heavier, more filled out than Lance’s, and—

 

Lance.

 

_Quiznak_.

 

Someone (read: Shiro) was going to have to tell Lance. Ignoring the matter wasn’t an option. Keith may not ever speak of his evening again, and Shiro wouldn’t blame him for it, but the truth was that it had happened. It had happened, and Shiro would be a liar if he said that the pervasive glow that had lit up inside of him hearing Keith call his name hadn’t existed. Even if for Keith it had been a favor for a friend in need, even if for Keith it had just been a mutually-beneficial one-night stand, Shiro couldn’t refute or ignore the fact that part of his body had been inside Keith in the least platonic way imaginable.

 

Shiro was aware that the same concept applied to Lance, of course. That the time they spent together behind closed doors was emotionally insignificant to Lance. And, obviously, Shiro and Lance had never even mentioned something as solid as monogamy. The very concept seemed ridiculous when applied to his and Lance’s relationship, so it wasn’t that Shiro should feel _guilty_.

 

But he somehow did. He’d had a functional set-up with Lance, and though he’d been in a tight spot last night he couldn’t help but feel that both the emotional and physical tethers of his relationship with Lance had strained, if not snapped, the moment he’d agreed to let Keith help him. It wasn’t infidelity. There’s no such thing as being unfaithful when there’s nothing to be faithful to. But Shiro felt that Lance, as someone involved with him, deserved to know. And he deserved to know from Shiro, rather than from an offhanded comment Keith may or may not make, or from seeing the constellation of bruises Shiro had left smattered across Keith’s neck.

 

The bruises on Keith’s neck. Shiro craned his head and yes, satisfyingly, there they were, storm clouds underneath his skin. Shiro shouldn’t feel proud of those. The stirring in his chest, the way his heart rate picked up at the sight of them, wasn’t his to have. And yet his ribcage ached with pride at the stunning contrast between Keith’s pure milky skin and the black spots that marred it. Shiro’s mouth had been there. He had sunk his teeth in and run his tongue over Keith’s flesh.

 

One minute. He gave himself one minute, until the slow count of sixty, to bask.

 

_One, two, three_. Keith’s arms were encompassing. One hand rested at the small of his naked back, lax in sleep. They were strong arms, powerful arms, and though Shiro could easily break their hold himself the enveloping, protective feeling that they provided to him was dizzying in its pleasure. _Twelve, thirteen, fourteen_. Somehow during the night Keith’s thigh had ended up between Shiro’s. The position was somehow innocent, even given the fact that they were both naked. As though Keith’s subconscious had made an effort to pull him as close to Shiro as humanly possible. _Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five_. Their chests rested against each other. As they both inhaled their skin brushed. Shiro felt the point of contact like a burn. _Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight_. Keith’s hair tickled the underside of Shiro’s chin. He gently rubbed against it just to feel how soft it was. It didn’t disappoint. _Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty_. Shiro raised his head to look at Keith’s sleeping face again. Lips parted, eyelashes resting, Shiro couldn’t fight the warm wash of bliss over him.

 

_Fifty-seven. Fifty-eight._ Shiro felt Keith’s warm breath brush over him. _Fifty-nine. Sixty_. Shiro bowed his head, and pressed his lips to the crown of Keith’s hair.

 

He then kicked Keith’s leg out from between his own, pulled his own arms back from around Keith’s waist, and tensed his body.

 

“Keith,” he said, and was surprised by the gruffness in his own voice. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Keith.”

 

A sound rose from the back of Keith’s throat, low but clear, and it spread through Shiro like his heart had beat it through his veins.

 

“Keith,” Shiro said, a little louder. “It’s time to get up. Come on.”

 

Keith’s eyelids fluttered. He pulled back into a subconscious yawn, rolling onto his back. This took his arm off Shiro’s torso into an over-the-head stretch, but the one that had dug under the pillows underneath Shiro’s ribs stayed. Shiro tried to ignore the last of their physical contact, but that, like the way that Keith’s face scrunched as he gained awareness, brought him too much peace.

 

Shiro watched as Keith’s eyes opened. As Keith blinked groggily towards the ceiling, and then at Shiro, and then at his own naked body. He could see the realization creep up on Keith like the blush that swept over his face. Shiro was grateful for the covering of blankets.

 

“Are you okay?” Shiro asked, trying to save Keith the discomfort of finding a way to breach the tension here.

 

Keith frowned. “My back hurts, a little.”

 

The instant he said it, the evidence of the knowledge of _why_ his back might hurt came over him as a scowl. It did a poor job of covering his embarrassment.

 

“I’m sorry,” Shiro said, heartfelt.

 

“Don’t be,” Keith said quickly. And then, quieter, “I offered.”

 

“But still, I….” _But still I what_? Could have been gentler? No, Shiro had only touched Keith like he was his greatest, most fragile treasure. Shouldn’t have done it? As true as that was, Shiro couldn’t bring himself to regret it. “…didn’t mean to.”

 

It was left purposefully vague, but that didn’t stop the brief flash of a glance Keith gave him, with eyebrows down low and something raw in his eyes.

 

“I didn’t mean to pressure you into anything,” Shiro elaborated.

 

“I already told you I offered.” Keith didn’t look at Shiro now. Instead he pushed his way out of the bedding, blanket sliding from his bare body. Shiro tried not to stare. The memories from last night roused themselves in his brain but he pushed them back down, unwilling to dwell on them somewhere where the only thing between obvious arousal and the rest of the world was a thin blanket.

 

He let Keith walk away and watched as he gathered the pieces of his clothing and pulled them on, covering inch by inch of his perfect skin. It wasn’t until the marks Shiro left disappeared from view that he realized he should be dressing too.

 

* * *

 

“Come in,” Lance called out, knowing there was probably only one person on this ship who would be knocking on his door this time of night. He ran a hand through his hair and tugged on the bottom hem of his shirt to straighten it, but by that point the door was already opening.

 

“Hey,” Lance said, flashing a smile up at the newcomer.

 

“Hey,” Shiro replied.

 

The uncertain tone in his voice made Lance uneasy, and he looked up sharply. It wasn’t like Shiro to sound like that, and he seemed to realize it as he frowned at Lance.

 

“Something wrong?” Lance asked. He shifted over and patted the spot on the bed next to him.

 

Shiro took it without hesitation. “Nothing’s _wrong_ , really. I don’t think. I just wanted to talk to you about something.”

 

If words were weapons, that was the clinking the grenade’s pin made as it was pulled. Lance tried not to let it twist his stomach. He could tell you with almost complete certainty what his future held, or rather, what it didn’t hold: no more sex with Shiro. No more talking with Shiro at 3 am as Shiro wiped his own come gently off Lance’s face. No more snuggling into the space where Shiro’s enormous bicep rested against his gleaming pectorals when he laid on his side and beckoned Lance into his arms. No more fighting to stay awake at night to catch a glimpse of Shiro’s smoothed-out sleeping face, because god knew that Lance was never going to wake up earlier than Shiro in the morning. That was surely where this conversation was heading.

 

Just what had Lance been hoping for, anyway?

 

“What’s up?” Lance asked, trying to keep it casual. The tremor in his voice fought its way out anyway. He knew he’d have to give it up. He just wasn’t expecting it so _soon_.

 

“It’s not a big deal,” Shiro said, contrary to the way he wiped his palms on the tops of his pants. “I just wanted to tell you before someone else started talking about it first.”

 

“What, that you’re in love with me?” Lance said with a lazy smile. The joke had slipped out on instinct, trying to crack through the tension with all the delicacy of a stampede of elephants.

 

When Shiro’s eyes grew huge and his back straightened, for a split second Lance entertained the fantasy that he’d hit the nail on the head. That Shiro had come here because he had feelings to confess, feelings that he didn’t want other people discussing with Lance before he could discuss them with Lance himself. That he was about to tell Lance how much he really cared about him, not as a teammate or as a friend but as a lover, and that he didn’t want to stop coming here at night for his pleasure, and that he would like it is their relationship could be romantic, too. Images flashed through Lance’s head of holding Shiro’s hand on the bridge and kissing him goodbye before missions.

 

They were, of course, immediately dashed when Shiro replied in a rush that seemed to waterfall out of his mouth, “It’s about Keith.”

 

“Oh,” Lance said flippantly, ignoring the churning of his stomach. “What about him?”

 

“Well, last night at our diplomacy gathering—”

 

“You can just call it a party, Shiro,” Lance interrupted, losing patience.

 

“Last night at our _party_ , I drank more than I really should’ve.” Shiro sighed, and looked down at his hands. “I was pretty drunk, and I had one of my…attacks.”

 

Lance had a feeling he might know where this was going. “But it’s been weeks,” he said, clinging to the idea that this story might have a twist ending.

 

“I know,” Shiro replied. “I was really surprised. I thought I was done.”

 

Here he seemed to lose his way a little bit, and stared at the ground with thinned lips. Lance waited for him to speak again, but when he didn’t, Lance prodded.

 

“Is that what you came here to tell me?”

 

“No.” Shiro looked back up and met Lance’s eyes. This was his confession, then. “I was drunk and hurting, and Keith was there. So….”

 

The admission was implicit but it couldn’t have been clearer. Lance smoothed his face to expressionlessness. He let his left hand clench into a fist, but not his right one, because his left hand was blocked from Shiro’s view by his body. He opened his mouth.

 

“Oh, that’s it?” he asked.

 

Shiro’s eyes widened a little bit, and he examined Lance’s face. Looking for a different reaction, maybe, but Lance couldn’t for the life of him guess what kind. It wasn’t as though Shiro could have wanted Lance to be disappointed. He never would’ve slept with Keith in the first place if he had feelings for Lance, right?

 

(And the fact that Lance may have slept with someone who was not the person he initially had feelings for was a separate matter, thank you.)

 

“Yeah, that’s it,” Shiro replied slowly. “I just thought you might like to know.”

 

“I hope you used a condom,” Lance replied, cracking a painful grin. “I don’t want Keith touching what I touched.”

 

But _god_ , the thought of that had Lance thankful that he was sitting down. Lance and Keith had kissed the same lips. Lance and Keith had touched the same skin. Lance and Keith had had the same cock inside of them. Some sort of twisted, revolting transitive property linked Keith to Lance through bodily fluids. It was glorious, the image of it so fantastic as it glistened in Lance’s mind.

 

Except for the fact that when it came down to the two of them, to Keith and Lance, Lance knew which one Shiro would choose.

 

And Shiro’s face blanched. “I—I didn’t.”

 

Lance laughed, a tinny, “Ha-ha,” kind of thing. “That’s gross, dude. I didn’t need to know that. Now you’ve got Keith cooties.”

 

Keith cooties. Part of Lance wanted to lean forward and kiss Shiro right now, to see if he could taste something of Keith on Shiro’s tongue. It wasn’t possible, but Lance was flushed with the kind of emotion right now that made him want to act instead of feel.

 

Shiro raised an eyebrow. “That’s very mature, Lance.”

 

Lance forced another laugh, but the reality of the situation was clawing its way up his throat. He knew what was going on here. He knew why Shiro had chosen to tell him about this.

 

“So,” Lance said, making the decision to broach it before Shiro could. Why let someone else hurt you when you can just hurt yourself? “Are you going to be using Keith to help you from now on, then?”

 

Shiro opened his mouth, then closed it. Lance wasn’t sure what he would do if the answer was yes. Something in the back of his throat already felt thick. He was still able to swallow past it, for now, because Shiro was still sitting here in front of him. It would be hard to explain to Shiro why he was crying if he started.

 

“I hadn’t even considered that,” Shiro said. “I think we should just hope that that was the last one, and that I don’t need to use anyone anymore.”

 

“Yeah,” Lance said, but it cracked on the way out. He cleared his throat, and the sound seemed to echo, especially during the silence that followed.

 

“Alright,” Shiro finally said, and pushed himself to his feet. “That was it, I guess.”

 

Lance couldn’t figure out a way to ask him to stay. It had seemed so easy before yesterday. Somehow they’d fallen into the habit of joining together. One second they’d be brushing arms in the hallway and the next Shiro would have Lance backed onto his bed. They’d be waking up in each other’s arms and Lance’s hand would be on Shiro’s cock. They’d be laughing and talking with a late night snack between them in the kitchen. But now, Shiro was leaving the room, and Lance couldn’t remember any of the combinations of words he could use to snag him and keep him there.

 

“Shiro,” he called after him anyway.

 

Shiro stopped at the door and turned inquisitively.

 

“You know I don’t mind helping you, right?” Lance said.

 

Shiro smiled, and something about it sat poorly against his features, like it wasn’t genuine. Like it was sad.

 

“I know,” he replied. “Thanks, Lance.”

 

He left the room.

 

* * *

 

“So now you know, huh?” Lance asked Keith. They both lay on the floor of the observation room, side-by-side.

 

“Know what?” Keith asked. Lance couldn’t remember how they’d both gotten here, but they had.

 

“What it’s like to sleep with Shiro.” Neither of them was even looking at the stars.

 

“Yeah, I do.” Keith’s voice was soft, and rough.

 

“Cool,” said Lance.

 

* * *

 

The pain in Keith’s leg was unexpected, cleaving, and metallic. It felt almost as though he’d stepped his heel onto a long heated iron stake that slid easily up into his calf and ran its length parallel to his tibia. With each motion it ached, and Keith pondered absently if something was broken before realizing he had full, if painful, range of motion.

 

“Hey, you doing okay?”

 

Keith flinched. He’d been distracted enough by the pain that he hadn’t noticed Lance behind him until the breath of his whisper landed against his shoulder.

 

“Yeah,” Keith said. He shifted his weight. “I’m fine.”

 

Across the room, Shiro cut them both a look. _Listen to Allura_ , his expression transmitted, but Keith couldn’t help but wonder if their whispering made him uncomfortable due to other reasons. There was new item that fell into the shared space in the Venn Diagram of “Lance’s experiences” and “Keith’s experiences”, and it had every reason to make Shiro squirm.

 

“You don’t look fine,” Lance replied. He rocked back on his heels in Keith’s peripheral vision. His eyes were forward, looking at whatever Allura was lecturing to them about their mission today. “Your face keeps scrunching up and you look stupid.”

 

“Thanks,” Keith replied. “Are you done? I’m trying to get briefed on the mission.”

 

Lance’s hand dropped unexpectedly onto Keith’s shoulder, and Lance turned to look at him head-on. Keith, surprised, looked at him. “If something’s bothering you, you should get it out,” Lance said. “I’ve got your back, man. What’s up?”

 

Keith found something genuine in Lance’s face. It was all over his mouth, twisted into a concerned frown, and eyebrows that were low over eyes that picked apart Keith’s own expression. Since when had Lance learned to look at him like this?

 

“My leg hurts,” Keith found himself blurting.

 

Lance’s eyes went wide, and he cocked his head back. “Your _leg_ —?”

 

“Lance.” Allura’s voice cut in. It felt like glass shattering around Keith and when he looked up, he was in a different place than he had been from when Lance’s earnest eyes were turned on him. Here, there were other people, and a universe at their feet that needed their attention. “Are you listening?”

 

Lance snapped straight, his hand falling from Keith’s shoulder to his side. He spun towards the center of the room where Allura stood and grinned up at her. “Of course, Princess. I’m always listening to you.”

 

Keith had been under the impression that eye-rolling was a gesture specific to areas of Earth, but here was Allura now, showing great proficiency in it. Maybe she’d picked it up from Pidge.

 

“Can you repeat anything I just said, then,” she asked.

 

“Sure,” Lance fired back coolly. “We gotta, uh, protect this planet.” He gestured vaguely towards one of the holographic planets that hung idly before Allura like a shimmering Christmas bauble. “And beat the Galra.”

 

Allura’s expression flattened into something spectacularly unimpressed.

 

“In his defense, that was the basic gist of it,” Hunk piped up.

 

Both Keith and Lance’s attentions were drawn back to Allura then, as she reviewed the main points of the mission with a series of raised-eyebrow glances in their direction to confirm their focus. They apparently didn’t disappoint, because she reached the end of her lecture and surveyed the group.

 

“I’ll sit this one out,” she said. “Everyone, get to your lions.”

 

“You sure?” Shiro was double-checking, but by that point Keith was already striding towards the Red Lion’s bay, ignoring the bolts of pain that ran up his leg with each step. If it still hurt later, he would get it checked out by Coran. For now he had a job to do.

 

In space, with nothing between him and the vacuum but a metal hull and some baffling pseudo-magic, Keith could taste his own mortality like the tang of iron in the back of his mouth. It was part of the reason he loved flying. That every second something didn’t go wrong was a success felt like victory. Keith could play the game unlike anyone else, and when it was just him and the vast expanse in front of them and everything else fell away, no matter what he gambled he always came out on top.

 

That wasn’t always the case these days. There was a universe in the betting pool here, but that didn’t subtract from the joy of melding himself to a vehicle more powerful than any rocket ship he ever doodled in red crayon on the orphanage’s walls. And as they sunk into metaphysical contact, Keith could feel something like concern buzzing at the peripheries of his nerve endings.

 

“Shh,” Keith said, because it was nothing to worry about. He probably pulled a muscle sparring yesterday. If Red got any louder she might alert Lance or the other lions.

 

The Red Lion did not _shh_ , but Keith didn’t get any calls over the comms system about the state of his health either, so it was fine.

 

On Shiro’s command the five lions streaked towards the oppressed planet, and Keith blinked back a sudden wave of fatigue. There’d been something in Allura’s explanation about a centuries-old transmission for help. The further the spiderwebbing cracks of Voltron’s liberation crawled into the solid stone of the empire towards its core, the longer the planets they encountered had been under rule. This one, according to their sources, had put up a fight decent enough that its citizens had been forcibly broken through the drafting of all their working-age into slavery on a nearby quarry moon. This tradition still stood hundreds of febes later, which made Voltron’s business in this system very clear.

 

First, liberate the planet. Then, rescue the slaves off the moon. Straightforward and aggressive, just the way Keith liked his missions.

 

“Go in for the Galra ground base at these coordinates,” Shiro said over the comms. Something about his voice sounded a little watery, but so did the sounds of the engines around Keith. “It looks like that’s their biggest stronghold and also their only weaponized base. If we can take that out, it’ll be easy going from there.”

 

Shiro’s voice spoken directly into Keith’s headset, commanding and curling against the curve of his ears, had always made Keith warm under the surface of his skin. There was something more insistent about it now, how it permeated his veins and left him dehydrated. Almost certainly because he knew the way that voice sounded when darkened by lust and dragged down into bed. It wasn’t the time or place to reflect on it but Keith let the memories surface for a moment. They were as much a part of him as his bones and his sinews now. He shifted, readjusting them across his back. Keith was sweating.

 

Through an atmosphere thick with cyan clouds, wisps and snatches of the base came into view. A hulking purple blemish on the surface of a white-sand desert, a dark cancer that poisoned everything it touched. Keith neared first, the benefit of the fastest lion, and began spewing flames without prompting or orders. No one else seemed to mind. Absolute destruction was the goal of this mission. His aim was wavering but if anyone noticed they didn’t comment. Keith blinked hard to clear his head, ignoring his aching limb.

 

Turrets fired. The strength of their bolts was laughable but enough microorganisms can take down a giant. Luckily Shiro was on Keith’s contrail with jawblade poised, and Hunk was immediately after, barreling into gun towers to ruin them before they were even fully charged. A dark cloud of fighters took off from a hangar, but even without Voltron formed they were just a nuisance. Weirdly, they seemed to shift and swim before Keith’s eyes, but Lance tore through them with a whoop and a blast of ice.

 

Easy. Too easy. Keith grinned and gunned it for the main core of the base.

 

That was before the pain in his leg seemed to shatter into a thousand jagged shards and imbed themselves in his muscles. His vision cracked down the center. His world spun. It took him a dim-visioned moment to realize that was because his lion was actually somersaulting. Gritting his teeth, blinking through a crimson haze of pain, he righted himself and tried to focus. Everything was in double.

 

“Keith?” called alarmed voices like through a paper towel roll. “Pidge, _cover him_!”

 

“I’m okay!” he thought he said, but he couldn’t be sure. His brain felt like a sloshing raw egg inside the hard shell of his skull. He piloted the lion away from the fray, or a direction he thought was away. All the lights of the fight were melding together in a bright white splotch before his eyes. It burned, like the pain in his legs, like the heat flaring all over his skin. His stomach tossed.

 

Keith had barely enough presence to pull up his own vital readings but he did. The individual characters and numbers each waged a personal assault on his perception and the nerves at the back of his eyeballs that stung, but he tried to read the data.

 

“BODY TEMPERATURE: 102.8°F. CURRENT PHYSICAL STATUS: CRITICAL.”

 

Someone, somewhere, was still calling his name. It was lost amid a tinny ringing. Every cell in his body felt like it had combusted simultaneously. His skin was slick with sweat. Around the controls of his lion, his hands trembled. He could barely _see_ , let alone fight.

 

Keith grit his teeth and pushed his lion forward.

 

Shots crashed against his lion’s hull. When they jerked the lion Keith’s head rolled. It felt like his spine had turned to tensionless rope, but he just pushed the throttle forward. His vision lit up with amoebic shapes of red as fire poured forth from his lion’s mouth.

 

“Keith! _Keith_!” He tried to focus in on the words that were being spoken to him. They were important. They were from Shiro. “Keith, get back to the castle _right now_!”

 

“But I—!” he protested, but something hit his lion in the side and had him flopping. His body couldn’t keep itself upright. He realized, belatedly, that he was being powered away from the surface of the planet, and without any strength in his arms there was nothing he could do to fight it. He watched as nebulous streaks of blue passed and eventually gave way to the dark stretch of space.

 

“Keith? Are you with me?”

 

The words settled into his ear and sunk slowly. They were Shiro’s, and Keith wanted to cling to them like a piece of driftwood in the torrentially stormy waters. It occurred to him that the Black Lion must be towing the Red Lion back towards the ship.

 

“Yes,” Keith croaked. And then, helplessly, “Shiro.”

 

“I’ve got you, buddy,” Shiro said.

 

When Keith’s lion was again stationary, he went to stand. The pain in his leg was so devastating, so aflame, that his knees crumpled beneath him and he spilled onto the floor. When he tried to climb to his hands and his knees he found all his muscles useless, and like a marionette with its strings cut he slipped and sprawled with every motion.

 

Light spilled across him, edged with broken glass, and Keith hissed in agony. It took him a long moment to register that it was because his lion’s door had opened, and even longer to realize that the floating sensation wasn’t his soul leaving his body. He was being carried against a broad and solid chest, and comforting words spoke low in his ear.

 

Keith was placed outside his lion on the floor of the hangar, and the pieces of his armor started to come off. First his helmet, knocked to the floor and left carelessly to roll away. Then his chest plate, and he groaned deep at the ache in his lungs when he had to move his arms. His leg guards, which sent him spiraling into darkness with how every movement of his leg felt like being torn open with fishhooks from the inside. And then his bodysuit, peeled painfully from his sweat-sticky skin.

 

Even through the crushing pain, he was vaguely aware of other presences gathering around him, and he heard their gasps reverberate through him. He managed to drag his eyes open just long enough to see what had them fretting. He craned his neck.

 

From his knee down, his calf was a mottled black. Under the skin something bloomed, darker than bruises, pressing up against the normal peach of his skin to make a mixture of something deathly. Like a rot inside a fruit. Like a planet collapsing at its core. Keith stared at it in horror as the realization tore through his fog of pain.

 

_He was being eaten from the inside_.

 

Darkness swung over his vision, and Keith succumbed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please come shout with me about s4 tomorrow i could use a shouting buddy


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm so
> 
> this chapter and everything else i do goes out to han, the only person in this fandom capable of dealing with my bullshit for any extended period of time. let it be known that yesterday i sent them this chapter, the next chapter, and the alternate ending i wrote. they read all 30k of that today and have comments and suggestions for me that i haven't heard yet, but they're asleep rn so i'm posting regardless. they tried to stop me. they really did. han, this is my apology. (and don't be surprised if this chapter abruptly disappears tomorrow because han woke up and managed to talk some sense into me)

“So what you’re saying is the antibiotics _didn’t_ work?”

 

Hunk’s voice was high. Hysteric.

 

“Are we all going to get eaten by bacteria? Is this how it ends? Our muscle mass devoured by some little alien mouths? That’s horrifying. I love food but I never wanted to _become_ it. This is the cruelest way to—”

 

“Hunk,” Shiro interrupted. His tone, his face. They explained that he wasn’t in the mood for bullshit or dramatics. His hands were clenched at his sides in fists, and there was something in his eyes that read dark like fury. “Why don’t we listen to what Coran has to say before we get too carried away.”

 

Coran gave him a nod of thanks, but otherwise didn’t look away from Keith’s readings on the cryo-pod.

 

“Yes, it does appear that the antibiotics didn’t work completely,” Coran replied. “But I wouldn’t be too worried about being eaten right now. As Pidge mentioned at the beginning of this ordeal, the bacteria can only be _carried_ by you Earthlings. It can’t consume you.”

 

“Plus,” Pidge said. “Remember when I mentioned that the bacteria can only be transmitted sexually? You haven’t been sleeping with Shiro too, have you?”

 

 _Too_. Because Keith had slept with Shiro. Which was why he was in there.

 

Lance had _known_ that, before, but the physical evidence of it here in front of his face was irrefutable. He’d done his best to ignore the ache in his chest until now, but this razor slid between his ribs. There was pain in the way Shiro was staring at Keith’s face through the glass of the cryo-pod. He was carefully even about the set of his mouth, but he was blinking far too often, and too quickly.

 

“Hey,” Lance said. He had a genuine health concern. Any other reason for him to bring this up, to brag about it, in front of the group was now unconscious in a cryo-pod. “How come I haven’t had any attacks like Shiro, then?”

 

Pidge tossed him a look over her shoulder. “Are you implying that desperately horny wasn’t already your constant state?”

 

Before Lance could mentally piece together a comeback, Shiro interrupted.

 

“Not now, you guys.” He turned towards Coran. Something in his face soured into desperation. “Is he okay? That leg looks bad.”

 

Coran frowned. “I’m afraid not. The cryo-pod may slow down the bacteria with its freezing process, but as soon as he’s taken from there they’ll begin to eat again. Not to mention that the muscle that was consumed must now be replaced. That’s simply not something a cryo-pod can do.”

 

Lance’s gut formed a hard knot. Keith’s body, suspended in the pod, was on the brink of nonexistence. That thought left Lance feeling more coldly ravaged that any sort of jealousy ever could. He chanced another look at Shiro and found himself doubly pained. If Lance was feeling this bad, he couldn’t imagine Shiro’s hurt.

 

It was no secret to anyone except Keith himself that Shiro’s love for Keith was something beyond brotherly. Beyond friendship or camaraderie or a mentor caring for a student. And for it to be a slip of Shiro’s that Keith was being devoured inside out right now, that Keith could die and his world could stop turning, must have had a massive impact on Shiro. Lance’s chest clenched in sympathetic pain, seeing the expression on Shiro’s face.

 

“What can we do?” Shiro asked, and his voice was tight like he was speaking around a lump in his throat.

 

The room grew silent. Lance could feel himself growing more agitated with each passing second. Could he give his own muscles to Keith? His leg? His body? Anything would be better than watching Shiro’s face crumple before him.

 

“What about the Bitjetians?”

 

Allura’s hopeful words had the whole room perked up in curiosity. Coran’s back straightened, and his face broke out into a wide smile.

 

“Of course! The Bitjetians!” he exclaimed.

 

“The who what now?” Lance asked.

 

“The residents of planet Ta Bitjet,” Allura explained. “They’re a civilization famous throughout the universe for their extensive medicinal and surgical knowledge. I’m sure they would have an antibiotic strong enough to help the three of you, and they would certainly know what to do about Keith’s leg.”

 

“Let’s go,” Shiro said immediately, shoulders thrown back. His face had regained its control, and he strode towards the door. Everyone else followed, Lance with a last backwards glance at Keith.

 

“The only problem is that the Bitjetians are a rather reclusive bunch,” Coran said as the group made its way down the halls towards the bridge. Shiro, at the front, set the pace, and Lance found himself powerwalking to keep up. Pidge quickly fell to the back of the group. “They’re willing to help whenever they can, but ten thousand years ago they only let the very ill onto their planet. I can’t imagine that’s changed under Galra rule.”

 

“We should ask the Blade of Marmora if they have any updated information on them,” Shiro said. “Pidge, you handle that transmission.”

 

“Already on it,” Pidge called, falling further back as she typed out a message while walking.

 

“Shiro, I had no idea you were such a player!” Hunk said. “Both Lance _and_ Keith, huh?”

 

Shiro’s jaw set, and he said nothing.

 

Once on the bridge, everyone felt better. The air had settled slightly. They had a plan and a means to enact it. But Keith’s absence was notable, and Lance found himself itching. He barely paid attention as coordinates were chosen and a wormhole jump was made.

 

“Message from Kolivan!” Pidge announced, and everyone turned to look. “He says they’re not under Galra rule, but only because they’ve been living in secrecy. They barely let _anyone_ touch down on their planet.”

 

“Well, hopefully Voltron is enough to convince them,” Shiro said in a voice like the bottom of the ocean. A wide, red planet rose before him into the ship’s view, casting dark, bloody light against his face.

 

“There she is,” Coran announced. “Ta Bitjet.”

 

Allura put both hands on the ship’s controls, ready to accelerate closer and prepare for a landing, but before she could do anything a hailing signal appeared on the screen. Startled, she dropped her hands, and then straightened her spine to answer it.

 

The caller turned out to be an alien creature with more dark shifting scales than skin, humanoid in their face but not anywhere else. Their black hair, if its thick strands could be called such a thing, fell in a straight, uniform curtain to their shoulders, and from the crown of their head grew golden spines in a crown-like circle. When they held up a limb as if in some sort of greeting, it turned out they didn’t have a hand, but rather a thick claw.

 

Lance shifted uncomfortably, especially when the alien opened their mouth.

 

“How did you find this location?” they demanded. Their voice was choppy and hard. Zero points for bedside manner, if you asked Lance.

 

Allura stood tall. “It was in our ship’s maps, and corroborated with information from the Blade of Marmora.”

 

The alien was silent for a moment, clicking their claws.

 

“Who are you and what is your purpose here?”

 

“I am Princess Allura of Altea,” Allura announced. “And we are the Paladins of Voltron.”

 

The claw-clicking struck Lance as some sort of nervous habit, because the crustaceous creature did it again, more rapidly, their black eyes darting all over the place.

 

“Please turn your ship around immediately and never return,” the alien said curtly, and then made to power off the screen.

 

“Uh, hold up!” Lance said, standing. “Didn’t you hear her? We’re the _Paladins_ of _Voltron_.”

 

The alien turned their eyes on him, and Lance realized too late that they had no eyelids. Their stare was unblinking, and somehow their nervous clicking made them all the more unsettling.

 

“Yes, which is why I requested that you leave immediately,” they said. “You will draw the Galra here. Goodbye.”

 

The entire group clamored. Anxiety levels in the room were rising like water poured in from all sides and everyone was floundering to get their air. For a second it almost made Lance feel better. None of them were about to allow Keith to die. But it took him a heated moment to realize that them shouting over each other wasn’t about to convince an alien civilization to help them at its own detriment.

 

Allura seemed to reach the same conclusion because she turned her glare on the team, and instantly everyone quieted. Even Hunk, who looked prepared for the second coming of his breakfast.

 

“Sir, I promise we will defend you from any Galra forces that may appear,” Allura said. “But we are the universe’s best hope for survival, and one of our Paladins has contracted a potentially fatal infection. We need your help.”

 

The alien appeared unimpressed.

 

“We’ve managed to keep this planet hidden from the Galra for ten thousand years,” they said. “We provide an irreplaceable service to the universe that cannot fall into Galra hands. Do not draw attention to us by staying here. Please leave immediately.”

 

“One of the Paladins of Voltron is _dying_ ,” Shiro said. He had pulled out that demanding tone he only used when he had run out of patience, his hand a fist on the armrest of his chair. “If he goes, you’re going to have a lot more to worry about than the Galra finding just your planet, I promise you that.”

 

The clicking reached a crescendo. Lance watched the alien’s unblinking eyes dart around to all of them, Allura stern and fierce, Shiro with a certain unyielding desperation, Pidge and Hunk unsure and pleading. Then, the screen shut off.

 

A sharp, stunned silence conquered the room. Everyone was still for a hopeless moment. Shiro, dazed, shifted forward as if to stand, but fell back into his chair with a dull _thud_.

 

Suddenly, the screen brightened again. The alien appeared.

 

“ _One_ small craft may alight on the planet,” they said. “Do not land your ship. Take it far away from here immediately. Send only those who are infected.”

 

“Our friend is in a critical state,” Allura replied. “He may not make the journey outside of a cryo-pod.”

 

The alien met her eyes head-on. “We’ve made our conditions clear.”

 

The screen blinked black.

 

Instantly, Shiro stood. “Lance, you’ll pilot. I’ll go get Keith.”

 

“Are you sure?” Pidge was standing now too, and Allura was taking steps forward as if to intercept Shiro, but he was already striding towards the doors. “If you guys don’t make it down there in time….”

 

“It’s our only option,” Shiro said. His face was stony, almost frighteningly so. “We’ll take the Red Lion so we can get down there fastest.” His gaze snapped to Lance’s. “Lance, can you do it?”

 

In that moment, looking at Shiro, something occurred to Lance. Shiro could see right through him. Shiro knew him, had known him since the very beginning, maybe. Lance wasn’t just being dragged along because he’d happened to come in contact with the bacteria, too. Shiro was trusting Lance with this because he knew that Lance would do anything, _anything_ in his power to keep Keith alive.

 

Could he do it? He didn’t know. Maybe it was completely out of his hands. Maybe no matter how fast they could get Keith to the surface of this planet, he would inevitably succumb to this illness. Or maybe with the best, fastest pilot he could be saved. But they didn’t have that. Their only choice now was picking the fastest lion and the one person left who _could_ pilot it. And if Keith’s life was on the line, Lance would certainly do everything he could to make sure Keith made it down there as quickly as possible.

 

“Yeah,” Lance said solemnly. “Let’s go.”

 

The next time he saw Shiro was bathed in the red light of the cockpit. Keith, unconscious, was cradled in his arms, his body wrapped in a blanket. Keith’s head lolled despite Shiro’s efforts to keep it tucked against his shoulder, and his face shone pale with a thin sheen of sweat. Even from here Lance could tell that his breathing was labored.

 

“ _Go_ ,” said Shiro as soon as he’d settled against the floor, and Lance didn’t need to be told twice to gun it. His heart was already hammering in his chest so it was no different when the lion shot out of the castle. He barely paid attention as the Castle-ship flew off in the opposite direction behind them, his entire focus centered on the planet that loomed before them. He was locked into latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates that had been supplied via the transmission, and if he was to be honest with himself the lion herself could probably take them down on its own. But his hands seemed irreversibly clenched around the controls, and his eyes couldn’t unfocus from what was before them.

 

“How is he?” Lance asked, not daring to chance a glance back.

 

“He’s hot,” Shiro said.

 

Despite everything, Lance couldn’t help but give a snort. It was natural and instinctive. “Well, I knew _that_.”

 

Lance almost expected a snap, a bite, a lash, violent but understandable from a man who was watching someone important to him dying in his arms. Instead, he was met with something like a brick wall crumbling under his push.

 

“I’m sorry,” Shiro said.

 

It was impossible to determine who he was apologizing to. Maybe to Keith in his arms. That seemed to be the most likely. Lance knew that the only thing that was keeping the guilt from burying Shiro alive right now was his sheer determination to get Keith to safety.

 

Then Shiro kept talking, his voice taut and rough. “I love him.”

 

Lance grit his teeth. They were entering the atmosphere, and as steady as he wished his hands on the controls were, they trembled fiercely.

 

“I know,” Lance said. “I know you do, Shiro.”

 

The sky was turbulent. Lance had the accelerator pushed all the way, but it wasn’t fast enough. It could never be fast enough. But all he had control over at this point was not fucking up the landing, not crashing into the ground and cutting off Keith’s chances of recovery before he could even be exposed to them. Wouldn’t that be a headline for the intergalactic e-papers? Three Paladins of Voltron Die in a Fiery Crash on the Planet Meant to Save Them. The subhead: It was the Blue Paladin’s fault; he couldn't keep a craft straight to save his own life or those of the people he loved.

 

He could see it now, though, discern the pebbly texture of the red planet’s surface. A skeletal forest, white-treed and bare of leaves, unfolded before him. From its midst sprung natural spires of orangey rock, ringed with sandy yellow and black like a lemur’s tail. Dodging these was not Lance’s forte. That would belong to the man in the back, draped in Shiro’s arms, the life seeping out of him as they flew. But there was an incoming signal directing him to a landing pad hidden among the trees, and between here and there was a slalom course.

 

He twisted and spun past the first two. The third had him worrying about Shiro and Keith in the back, getting tossed around. Red was agile and fast but she wasn’t gentle. Lance’s eyebrows furrowed as he brushed past another one, and the scrape of it against the hull sent chills up his spine.

 

“C’mon, baby,” he begged the machine.

 

Lance jerked the controls to the side at the last second to slide between two rock spires. From behind him Keith groaned, and something heavy and wet and hopeless prickled at the corners of Lance’s eyes. This was, unmistakably, the worst mission he’d ever been on. His stomach rolled.

 

“Lance,” said Shiro, and his voice was so unsteady that it sawed Lance apart. “How much longer?”

 

“I have visual,” Lance replied. “We’re almost there.”

 

This was true. Past these last few rocky towers and between the parting trees he could see what must have been a landing pad, a vast white surface big enough for the lion to comfortably settle on. He bit down on his lip in concentration. Swerved, dodged, and accelerated. Kept his eye on the prize, and sang through the last two spires, out into open air.

 

It did nothing to help his tension. He could barely slow the lion down to a reasonable landing speed before he was on the dock. It was coming up too fast, and Lance yanked hard on the brake. But the ground approached with little heed of that. They slammed against the pad hard, Lance violently jostled in his seat. But then he was tearing off his belt and darting around the back of his chair.

 

Shiro had spilled in the impact, but it looked like he had protected Keith with his own body. Lance rushed over to help support Keith and aided Shiro in standing.

 

“You okay?” Lance asked.

 

“We’ve gotta work on your landings, Lance,” Shiro huffed, but he was conscious and climbing to his feet with Keith in his arms.

 

They couldn’t get out of the lion fast enough. Shiro almost tripped over himself on the way down the ramp twice, and Lance could just picture it: them having made it this far only for Shiro to drop Keith on his head. Death by a spill from Shiro’s arms probably wasn’t on Keith’s mental list of “ways I might die,” if he even kept one at all, which was highly questionable. But Shiro retained his grip and Lance was forced to reshuffle the list he kept on Keith’s behalf to return its previous number one concern of “devoured from the inside out by alien microorganisms.”

 

Because, Lance quickly found, that even with two feet firmly on the surface of the planet they were no closer to getting Keith his cure. Surrounded on all sides by sterile trunks of spindly, reaching white trees, the three of them and the Red Lion were the only sentient things in sight. Lance spun around in a tight, frantic circle, and saw no clear path of moving forward.

 

“Hang in there, buddy,” he overheard Shiro murmuring. His voice was tight, throttled by grief.

 

Lance was hardened with the same feeling. His instinct to draw close to them, to fret over Keith in Shiro’s arms, was near-overwhelming. Instead he focused on surveying their surroundings for a clue, a sign, anything. He refused to let the thought that this was a dead end do anything more than simply flit through his mind and leave again. That line of thought only led him to Keith’s death, which was an unacceptable outcome.

 

“I’ll get back in Red and look around,” Lance said, voice grating on the way out, hoarse with barely-contained desperation.

 

“No,” said Shiro.

 

And as he did, a silvery glow lit up between the trees in front of them. A path, illuminated between the ghostly paleness of the flora, stretched out before them over the flat ground.

 

“That’s all they’re gonna give us, huh,” Lance said.

 

“Let’s go,” replied Shiro without hesitation.

 

Lance, stomach filled with a sloshing fear, followed, as he always would.

 

“Are you doing okay with him?” Lance asked lowly as they stepped out. Shiro was walking fast, but his attention was within his arms.

 

“Are you offering to carry him?” Shiro said. It was almost a snap. Lance knew it was derisive because Shiro was aware of his team’s limitations like they were his own. He didn’t blame Shiro for that, like he didn’t blame Shiro for the reason they were here.

 

“Put him over your shoulder, at least,” Lance said, with holey, hazy, blackened remembrances of Shiro’s sure hands hefting him up and over his broad back.

 

Shiro was silent for a moment before he shifted Keith’s weight. Without breaking his stride, he gently heaved the limp, unconscious body over his shoulder. Keith, with his sweat-streaked face and a creased forehead, barely stirred. Lance frowned, looking at him.

 

“This is bullshit,” Lance grumbled, fitting his long strides behind Shiro’s so that he could feel Keith’s forehead. He was feverish. “Hello!” he shouted out into the forest. “This is an emergency? We don’t have time for a nature walk!”

 

The only response was his words echoing back to him from the motionless trees and Shiro’s continued footfalls against the solid path.

 

A violent, shuddering gasp of breath between Keith’s lips had Shiro tensing. Lance, immediately, tried to brush Keith’s bangs from his face, but was only met with an expression contorted in agony, and his heart lurched.

 

“Keith,” Shiro said, and sped up.

 

Keith’s eyelids tightened, and then he blinked blearily, squinting, limbs still slack. His gaze passed over Lance, unseeing and unfocused, until Lance murmured, “Stay with us, Keith. Come on.”

 

“Lance,” Keith breathed, voice insubstantial. “Lemme…lemme down. I can walk.”

 

Lance laughed hoarsely. “No, you definitely can’t, buddy.”

 

“Gotta,” Keith said, eyelids fluttering, “Gotta tell Shiro—”

 

“I’m right here, Keith,” Shiro said. “You’re gonna be okay. Just hang on.”

 

“Shiro.” Keith plowed on, his eyes closed again. “Me too, Shiro. Me too.”

 

Shiro didn’t say anything in response, so Lance did as he did best and filled the silence himself.

 

“Shut up, Keith, come on. Save your breath. We need you to pull through.”

 

Keith’s entire body shuddered with an exhales, and Lance realized belatedly that it was a laugh. “You don’t…need me.” Indecipherable choking sounds, and then, “—n’t…leave me….”

 

On instinct Lance grabbed for Keith’s hand. It was clammy and utterly loose as though inanimate, and touching it felt like holding hands with a corpse. Lance would have shivered if he wasn’t so wholly focused on Keith’s face.

 

“I need you. Keith, I need you. I need you so much.”

 

But Keith’s eyes were closed again, his breathing shallow and strained, and there were no signs of consciousness.

 

“Screw this,” Lance said. Dropping Keith’s hand, he slipped around Shiro, and sprinted forward down the glowing path.

 

In a matter of footfalls the trees parted abruptly before him. He tore out onto a flat open surface, clearly synthetic and not part of the red earth. It was stark and plain, no living things visible, and the only structures a handful of distant white pyramidal towers.

 

Lance was frozen, overwhelmed by the spread before him.

 

“Paladin of Voltron,” came a voice from behind him. “It’s a pleasure to have you on our planet.”

 

 _That’s not what you were saying an hour ago_ , Lance thought tersely as he whirled around. The owner of the voice was a creature that came striding out from between the trees. It was the same sort of alien from the communications screen, a weird, scaly, clawed thing. They walked on six legs and had a long tail that curled high over their head, and if Lance hadn’t been told that Keith’s life was dependent on this species he would’ve bolted away from them as fast as the nearest vehicle could carry him.

 

“Where is your infected companion?” they asked, claws clicking.

 

“On his way,” Lance said. “Can you help him?”

 

“Probably,” was the response. The single word, though spoken with conviction, was far less of an absolute than Lance wanted.

 

“He needs help _now_ ,” Lance said.

 

“I understand,” the alien replied with little rise or fall in their voice, though their claws were clicking wildly.

 

Shiro broke out from the trees, with Keith still lifeless across his shoulder. He came straight towards Lance and his new friend. His face was dark, and though he looked as though he was about to speak, the alien clicked their claws together wildly instead.

 

“Please place the infected into one of our cryo-stasis transportation vehicle,” they said.

 

For a moment Lance had no idea what he could be referring to, but he turned and noticed that a wheeled contraption had followed the alien creature. Sitting on top was a large plain white box, its lid hinged. It bore an uncanny resemblance to a minimalist coffin, and Lance immediately didn’t like it, but that didn’t stop the alien from flipping open its lid and gesturing towards the inside.

 

The hesitation that followed was not undue. Lance looked towards Shiro, and found his motions uncharacteristically wavering, face uncertain.

 

“Go on,” the alien prodded.

 

“What is this?” Shiro demanded.

 

“A cryo-stasis transportation vehicle,” was the simple answer. “Likely the same exactly technology you have on your ship.”

 

Shiro’s face hardened. He pulled Keith carefully into his arms. In that position, the shallow, rapid breaths that came from between Keith’s pale lips were suddenly much more noticeable, as was the way his forehead was deeply furrowed as if in pain. He was definitely not conscious, and things were not moving fast enough for Lance. Shiro shut his eyes and took a deep breath, before pressing his lips against Keith’s forehead. He rested them there for one, two, three seconds, before gently lowering him into the box.

 

“Is this safe?” Shiro asked before letting him slip all the way inside.

 

“Yes,” the alien answered.

 

Shiro let Keith go. Not out of trust, but out of necessity. Lance and Shiro both watched as the alien tossed the lid shut over Keith’s body, locking him inside. Then he gave the cart a gentle push, and it wheeled away, some kind of motor or magnetism pulling it towards the distant structures. Lance watched it go with a pain in his chest.

 

“Let’s walk and talk,” the alien said, scuttling— _ick_ —past Lance and Shiro.

 

“But Keith—,” Lance began to protest, until he was cut off by the _clickclickclick_ of the alien’s claws in the air.

 

“He’s in stasis,” the alien said. “He will remain so safely until it’s time to operate on him. Please be patient and come with me.”

 

“How soon can you operate on him?” Shiro asked at the same time that Lance said, “Are you sure he’s safe?” but the alien ignored both of them in favor of leading them along the same way the cart had gone. Shiro and Lance had no choice but to follow.

 

Shiro repeated Lance’s question about Keith’s safety, louder. He wouldn’t be ignored. The expression on his face made Lance think of a terrible god, all-powerful and prepared to smite anything before him.

 

“Perfectly,” the alien replied curtly. “My name is Morai, and I am one of the leading specialists in carbon-based warm-blooded species on Ta Bitjet. Your friend is, I assume, warm-blooded?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And I trust that you’re positive you’ve led no Galra to this place?” Morai asked.

 

“None,” Shiro said, his emphaticness bordering strongly on disrespect. “What’s happening to Keith?”

 

Morai was leading them towards the distant pyramids. Lance took a moment to examine his surroundings more thoroughly. The white, glassy surface stretched out around them until it met ghostly trees on all sides. They popped against the clay-colored sky, dull and dark, though the ambient light from an out-of-sight sun lent everything a twilight glow. The town, if this was in fact a town, was silent, and aside from their party Lance saw no others.

 

“He’s in cryo-stasis,” Morai repeated. “His condition should not worsen while he’s there.”

 

“Yeah, but when will he get better?” Lance asked.

 

“As soon as we understand his state,” Morai said. “Can you explain to me what happened?”

 

Shiro’s step faltered. When Lance looked up at his face his eyebrows were drawn together.

 

“It was my fault,” Shiro said. “Everything. I—”

 

“Shiro,” Lance said, and put his hand on Shiro’s elbow, grateful suddenly that he was on his left side. Shiro could feel with his right, but Lance knew from long nights together that if Shiro was going to touch another person, he preferred it with his left.

 

Suddenly Shiro’s hand shot out. Lance thought for a second he was going to lose a wrist to Shiro’s battle-honed instincts, but instead Shiro’s hand snagged his in his own. Not comfortably. Shiro hadn’t linked their fingers or slotted their thumbs in the right place but instead grabbed the whole thing and enveloped it in his broad palm and hard grip, like he was holding onto a life saver while lost at sea. He continued on this way, holding on, without a single glance at Lance. If Lance’s heart hadn’t already been in his throat, it would have skipped a beat just then.

 

“I got lured down to a planet with flesh-eating bacteria,” Shiro explained. “It doesn’t affect pure Earthlings—that’s what I am—but it can be passed to other alien species. We thought I wasn’t contagious anymore, but I ended up accidentally infecting him.”

 

Shiro’s voice sounded like papers trampled underfoot and animals in mourning. Lance wrested his hand out of Shiro’s iron grip just to readjust their hold. Now Lance’s hand was properly in Shiro’s, and he gave a comforting squeeze. Shiro’s fingers wilted against his.

 

“He’s not the same species as you?” Morai asked.

 

“He is, partially,” Lance supplied. He knew what question was coming next and he was suddenly reminded of being at the doctor’s office. Everyone knows you’re supposed to tell your physician the full truth, but when you’re eighteen and the doctor asks if you drink alcohol or do drugs admitting that you smoke weed and would put your alcohol intake at a conservative 4 drinks a week there’s always that tiny voice asking, _What if this guy’s not chill?_ This felt like that. But much, much more dire.

 

“What is he?”

 

“He’s Galra,” Shiro said.

 

The clicking came immediate and loud. “You said you didn’t bring—”

 

“He’s not with the empire,” Lance said. “He’s a Paladin of Voltron.”

 

And yet more nightmare scenarios filled Lance’s head. The Bitjetians refusing to help Keith on the grounds that he was Galra. Keith’s life draining out of him on this too-sterile, too-quiet planet while Shiro and Lance were helpless to do anything about it and those who could watched on coldly. A series of bad decisions leading to the extinguishing of the greatest source of light and heat in Lance’s life.

 

They continued the walk in silence. Shiro held his head high and strode, unrelenting, but he didn’t let go of Lance’s hand. And though Lance felt like crumpling beside him, he channeled the last of his flagging strength into propping Shiro up.

 

Eventually, they reached the base of a towering pyramid. They ducked through a doorway and into a long and unremarkable hallway, the same indistinguishable white as everything outside. A row of lights on other side of the ceiling lit the way, and they passed evenly-spaced doors on either side. Morai swerved, and hustled them into a room off the main hallway. The inside was just as white. White padded chairs, a white table, a white couch, a white bed, a white window frame that looked out onto an expanse of white buildings and the rock spires beyond.

 

“You may wait here,” he announced. “Do not attempt to return to your ship. It’s being held on our anti-tracking pad. Do not leave this room.”

 

Lance looked at Shiro, frowning, but Shiro was staring at the alien with an impenetrable expression.

 

“Do we have your consent to begin operating on your…Keith?” Morai asked.

 

“Yes,” Shiro said.

 

Without further communication, Morai shuffled backwards out of the room, and the door slid shut behind him, leaving Lance and Shiro alone.

  

* * *

 

“Can you sit down? Or something?”

 

Shiro’s head snapped up. He hadn’t even been aware that he was standing. But here he was, in the center of the room. His feet ached under him but he had no desire to sit. Something fierce and demanding lived in his muscles, and there was no way to contain it other than to spend it.

 

“Sorry,” Shiro said, and his voice was raspy. Hoarse. “I’m nervous.”

 

“I know, dude,” Lance said. “Me too.”

 

Lance gave no indication of it. He was seated in one of the white armchairs. Why a species that couldn’t sit in chairs had the need for armchairs Shiro didn’t know, but the view of Lance draped in one was enough to distract Shiro for the barest sliver of a heartbeat. Shiro dragged his gaze up from Lance’s posture to his face, where he saw Lance’s real state. There was a strain over his forehead and weighing down on his lips.

 

“Wonder how long we’re gonna be stuck here,” Lance said.

 

Shiro looked out the window, just so that he wouldn’t have to see Lance’s face anymore. There wasn’t much out there to look at, though.

 

“They’re a super advanced civilization,” Shiro replied. “Shouldn’t be too long.”

 

But they both knew it had already been _too long_. Neither of them had much way of telling how long they’d been waiting in the room, but it had been long enough that Shiro had completely lost his grasp on the passage of time. It had also been much longer than he was truly comfortable with, but _any time at all_ could be described as that. He couldn’t tell if this was dragging or his heart rate was just too fast, too much.

 

“So uh,” Lance said slowly, his voice filling the crushing, overwrought silence. “You gonna tell him? If—when he gets out of there?”

 

It took Shiro a second to catch on to what Lance was talking about. Just because it was always something that had been secondary. Not in importance, and not in intensity of feeling. But compared to his daily tasks of saving the universe it wasn’t where Shiro’s priorities laid, as much as he wished it could be. _Tell who what?_ was simply because he’d never even made a consideration of it once he’d left Earth’s atmosphere for the first time. The fantasy of _one day_ was just that, a fantasy, and the temptation of it, or the fear of it, wasn’t going to bring his reality closer to its goal.

 

But Lance’s question brought it to the forefront in a scintillating way that Shiro had only been exposed to recently. It burned against his retinas.

 

“I don’t think so,” Shiro replied helplessly. “I can’t. It’s a war. And I can’t put the extra stress on him. I can’t do that to him or to—” Shiro cut himself off. “Or to anyone.”

 

“Stress?” Lance laughed, a dry, flimsy thing. “If you don’t think you telling him would make him the happiest man in the universe you don’t know him at all.”

 

Shiro had admittedly never gotten that far in his thought process. Maybe in a simpler time. Maybe before he’d boarded a piece of metal set to transport him to the end of the solar system. Concerns over whether his feelings were reciprocated or not were a luxury of simpler times. Instead of wondering how Keith felt about him he had begun wondering if Keith was even going to be alive the next day. Now he didn’t really know either of those things.

 

“It doesn’t matter, Lance,” Shiro said. “He’s dying.”

 

Lance was quiet.

 

“It’s my fault,” Shiro said. “He’s dying and it’s my fault.”

 

The words sat truthful and heavy on his shoulders like a pack full of bricks. They dragged his whole posture down. His head tipped downwards, his eyes towards the floor.

 

A pair of shoes appeared in his vision.

 

“Shiro,” Lance said, right in front of him. “You didn’t know.”

 

“Still,” Shiro said. “I shouldn’t have. With him, or with you.”

 

“Shiro.”

 

Lance said it again, voice completely saturated with emotion, a sponge soaked until dripping.

 

“Come here.”

 

Lance’s arms were held open. The ultimate temptation, the gates of hell. Or, just a man trying to comfort Shiro when he needed it. And god, did Shiro need it. Had, since the moment he’d been picked up off a rock floating at the edges of human reach by a battalion of bloodthirsty aliens.

 

He knew it was giving into temptation that landed them here in the first place. That was already carved into his mind. But he also knew the comfort of Lance’s arms because of it, and right now he was splitting at too many seams to need not an outside force to hold it all together.

 

He swallowed, took a deep breath, and stepped forward into Lance’s embrace. Immediately Lance gave no room for air between them, the familiar build of his body pressing in against Shiro’s as much as possible. Shiro bowed his head to tuck his face against Lance’s neck, and breathed in his familiar scent, something like sea salt and coconuts. How he could still manage to smell so much like a product of Earth after all this time bewildered Shiro but also calmed him.

 

“You’re still my hero,” Lance said.

 

Shiro didn’t realize he was crying until he sniffled, hard. A rush of heat shot through his face and he tried to break away, but Lance held firm, fingers clutching at the fabric of his clothes. Despite Shiro’s best efforts to stop the flow, the tear tracks ran wet down his cheeks, and though they must’ve been falling onto Lance, he didn’t seem to mind. He tensed his muscles, trying to stand solid against the way his lungs ached to heave, but breathing was difficult around the blockage in his throat.

 

Lance trembled against Shiro. Shiro worried for a second that he was hurting him before he heard his own sniffles echoed in Lance’s voice. If Shiro’s heart wasn’t already fractured, that was the moment that tore him. Lance was scared too. Worried, and hurt.

 

“I have to tell you something,” Lance said, wetly.

 

When Shiro picked up his head to face him, because this sounded like a serious matter that deserved eye contact even if the eye contact was saline, Lance kept him close. In fact Lance raised his hands to Shiro’s face, cupped his cheeks between them, and used his thumbs to swipe under his eyelashes, smearing wetness but collecting the tears on his thumb. Shiro had somehow in the past week or so forgotten the comfort of Lance’s hands, and how they could bring him together just by feeling their warmth.

 

“It’s about Keith, right?” Shiro asked. “I already know. You’re not subtle. You love him too.”

 

Lance’s thumbs stopped, and his eyes grew wide, but it settled back down into something like a lopsided smile devoid of actual happiness. Shiro was disarmed by how bright his eyes were when filled with tears, by the way his eyelashes clumped together and stuck like reeds in a storm.

 

“You’re not wrong,” Lance said, and though Shiro had already known that, the admission tore at his chest, and the tumble of his heart was turbulent. “But it’s not about him. It’s about you.”

 

“Me?” Shiro asked.

 

“Yeah,” Lance said. He swallowed visibly, and lost his little grin. His red-rimmed eyes roved Shiro’s face.

 

The sound of the door sliding open rang out behind Shiro, and in accompaniment was the insistent clicking let them know that they had company. Shiro’s arms fell away from Lance and he spun around.

 

“How is he?”

 

“We have some news,” the Bitjetian said.

 

Lance’s face went a little pale at that, echoing the drop of Shiro’s stomach. “Bad news?”

 

“Possibly,” the Bitjetian said, and the crypticness of that answer was enough for Shiro to take an instinctive, aggressive step forward. He was ready to wring answers out of the creature if he needed to. Maybe they saw this in his eyes, because they sidestepped out of the range of his arms and quickly spoke again. “In order to eradicate the bacteria, we need a sample of it. Preferably in its purest form possible.”

 

With these words they placed a glass vial on a nearby tabletop. The subsequent clink of it against the surface sounded like a bell.

 

“I’ll give you one varga,” they announced. “Then I’ll return for the sample.”

 

And with that, they vanished out the door.

 

Shiro’s eyes immediately locked onto Lance, earlier emotional turbulence now replaced with a new one.

 

“Was he implying what I think he was?” Lance asked without hesitation.

 

“‘Its purest form possible’,” Shiro quoted. “‘The bacteria is most easily transmitted sexually.’” He sighed. “Yeah. He definitely was.”

 

Lance snorted, something derisive and wry and simply _done_ all at once. “Time to get jacking then I guess.”

 

Feeling at a loss, Shiro stared at the vial on the table. Somehow the little container seemed to hold so much weight. How could he even be expected to get hard in this situation? Was he supposed to just sit here and masturbate while his best friend was on the verge of death? His fingers were shaking.

 

“Shiro?” Lance said.

 

“I don’t,” Shiro said, and found his voice trembling. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t get hard like this. It’s too much.”

 

Lance came towards Shiro again, drawing close to make sure that he was in Shiro’s line of sight. His hand came up and landed on Shiro’s shoulder. Shiro concentrated on the warmth of it and focused his energy into breathing. “Come on, man. It’s okay. I’m here for you. We can do this.”

 

 _We_. “You’re carrying the bacteria too,” said Shiro.

 

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

 

“Can you…um…?”

 

When Shiro really looked at him, he realized that Lance’s eyes were wild somehow, and his hand trembled as he ran it back through his hair. “I don’t know. I’m just as stressed out about this as you are, dude.”

 

With a heavy sigh, Shiro’s attention wandered. He surveyed the room to keep it from turning inward again. There was a wide bed on the side of the room, so at the very least he could lie down. Be in comfort as he helplessly tried to get off for the sake of someone he loved. But his own hands were already despairingly dirty. The thought of touching himself made him want to scream.

 

“If it was someone else, then…,” he mused quietly.

 

Shiro could almost see the idea dawning across Lance’s face at the same time that it hit him. It wasn’t a difficult solution to make the jump to, though now the jump felt more like a headlong dive off a treacherous cliff. Lance’s eyebrows had climbed, and now he was eyeing Shiro with the kind of _are you thinking what I’m thinking_ expression that Shiro loathed to answer _yes_ to.

 

“One last time?” Lance asked, a bit of a sheepish grin creeping onto his exhausted features. “For old time’s sake?”

 

The choice was his. Lance was asking him a question, and Shiro doubted he would react negatively in the case of a rejection. They were both exhausted and stressed, and the worry that Shiro felt coagulated as a lump in the back of his throat. Lance would understand.

 

And yet, Shiro couldn’t say no. He couldn’t say no, because this was Keith’s life that was on the line and Shiro would offer up everything he had to ensure his safety. This was what he told himself, and what made him thin his lips and look at Lance and nod and say, “Yeah, sure.”

 

It was not what made him add, “It’s just sex, right?”

 

No, that came from somewhere else. This came from the deeper place that wanted to put his hands on Lance immediately, not because it would save their friend’s life, but because Shiro was a person only made of muscle and blood and bone and lots of chemicals in his brain that reacted in strange ways. He was a human with wants and needs, and someone can only survive on self-deprivation for so long. He was weakened and the weight he was feeling was enormous and crushing, and the blow he was being delivered at this moment was directly to his Achilles’ heel. Any amount of regret he would feel about this afterwards was a just retribution, but right now, he needed hands on him that belonged to someone he cared about. He needed comfort.

 

Lance cocked his head back. His lips twisted into something that Shiro wished he could describe as a smile.

 

“Yeah,” Lance said. “It’s just sex.”

 

He stepped forward into Shiro’s space, where Shiro could easily have looped his arms around him. But Lance was looking down, his eyes hidden by the dark fringe of his eyelashes, his head bowed towards Shiro’s chest. The breath from Shiro’s nose stirred his hair. Drawing on his patience, Shiro waited for him to move.

 

Lance did, with two palms sliding up his chest, crossing onto his shoulders, snagging behind his neck. Lance tilted his chin up and looked Shiro in the eye, the blue there uncharacteristically somber. It was the last thing Shiro saw before his own eyelids slid shut and he was pulled in towards Lance’s lips.

 

Kissing Lance was always a pleasurable experience, physically, and although the current situation made it difficult to really enjoy _anything,_ there was a restorative aspect of it. It was a chemical reaction, after all. Physical touch released oxytocin. Oxytocin reduced fear and anxiety. This was just science. The natural result was feeling the fluttering panic stop choking his lungs, even just a little bit.

 

Shiro pushed his analyses aside and focused on Lance’s tongue sliding into his mouth. For a moment teetering on the verge of hopelessness Shiro thought he had been right, that there was no way he could get hard in this situation. But Lance’s body on his always seemed to untie a series of tight knots inside of him, setting him loose. It wasn’t long after Lance had pressed himself flush to his pelvis that Shiro could feel himself growing hard against him, the want of him filling him in tidal waves.

 

Lance bit his lip, gave a suck, and then broke apart. The knowledge that they didn’t have the time to prolong this dictating their actions, they relocated to the bed in a flurry of limbs and broken gasps. Shiro barely had the presence of mind to grab the vial from the counter and put it beside them on the bed before Lance pushed him back onto the mattress. Lance was poised beautifully over him, pulling his shirt up over his flushed torso, and Shiro dragged his eyes up each rib as it was revealed. His internal panic had cleared just enough to admit to himself that he was really, truly going to miss this. This view of Lance sitting astride his hips. The feeling of Lance rucking up his shirt to smooth his hands over Shiro’s chest. Lance’s mouth as it closed in on him, taking searing kiss after kiss after kiss.

 

Lance grappled his pants off, and Shiro kicked his own down past his ankles. The smooth slide of Lance’s skin against him, warm and soft and sweet, ignited something in Shiro and he flipped Lance onto his back. Lance’s resulting intake of breath was gratifying, and as Shiro crawled on top of him, he appreciated the way Lance’s eyes stayed trained on him, as if he wasn’t something terrible to behold.

 

Shiro trailed a hand down Lance’s side, the heel of his palm leading the way over the flawless skin. When he reached the hipbone he traced his thumb along the jut of it, feeling the skin slide over bone. Lance breathed a kind of encouragement, his own hands landing on Shiro’s forearms and gliding their way up to the muscles of his shoulders. They waited there, feeling the hills and valleys of Shiro’s body. They never broke eye contact.

 

When Shiro had sated himself of the ridge of Lance’s hip he felt down towards his thigh. He squeezed there, feeling the give of his flesh, how it was warm and soft in his grip. Lance, in turn, rolled his shoulders back and bared himself to Shiro, accepting, encouraging his touch. It was something private and intimate and more than Shiro deserved.

 

To take his mind off of it he worked his hand inward. Lance’s cock was curved prettily up towards his stomach, already fully hard, and Shiro brushed his fingers up the side of it. He smeared a bead of precome from the tip over the head, and then wrapped his fingers around the shaft.

 

Lance shivered under his hands.

 

“You okay?” Shiro asked.

 

“Feels nice,” Lance replied, and didn’t meet his eyes.

 

So Shiro gave him more. He tightened his grip, and let his hand slide down, and back up. As if it was to himself, his heart kicked up like a fleeing rabbit. Lance reached for him and mirrored his motions. Their arms knocked together on the pull before they settled into a steady rhythm.

 

Shiro, to his own astonishment, felt his pleasure rising. He looked at Lance, studied the furrow of his brow and the dip of his collarbone, and everything in his body clamored. _Closer. More._ Lance’s hand was hot and knowing on him, well-versed in what brought him pleasure. He used that knowledge to his advantage, making Shiro’s breath come faster.

 

“Hey, since they asked us for this,” Lance said, his voice pitched strange and exerted, “it means they’re definitely going to operate on him, right?” His breathing hitched. “Even though he’s Galra?”

 

The thought made something in Shiro’s shoulders relax. “I hope so.”

 

This was nice, and something in the blue of Lance’s eyes made Shiro drop his hips. He grinded down, pressing himself into Lance. With an appreciative hum and slow, pleased blink, Lance got his hand out of the way, giving Shiro room and permission to wrap his fingers around the both of them together. Here he thrust, feeling the drag of himself against Lance, the intimacy of their touch, the heat of where he held them together.

 

Lance begged for more, wanted it faster, and Shiro was happy to comply. He jerked his fist in time with his thrusts and had Lance arching underneath him. This was a heavy contribution to the sensation gathering in Shiro’s lower body, to the way he could feel himself pulling tauter and tauter.

 

“Fuck, _yes_ ,” Lance said, head thrown back, hands leaving burning imprints all over Shiro’s skin. “That’s so good. You’re so good, Shiro.”

 

Chest flushed to match his cheeks, hairline dark with sweat, mouth curved open around his heavy breaths, eyelids dropping with pleasure, Lance was a dream beneath him, brought to flesh. Shiro couldn’t help the selfish thought, even as it was fought back instantly with a wave of guilt. This wasn’t something fun or pleasurable. His selfishness had already taken its toll.

 

That’s when Lance reached up, fingers outstretched and grasping, and linked them behind Shiro’s neck. Shiro slowed his pace to accommodate him, the way he pulled Shiro down towards him into the reach of his lips, which he proceeded to use on Shiro’s jaw, his chin, his throat. Shiro shifted into the new position, redistributing his weight, and then grinded down against Lance harder than he had before.

 

It was the right thing to do. Lance lost coherency and use of his fine motor skills, his mouth falling open against Shiro’s skin, a hot, wet imprint on his neck. His body was searing and pliant and damp against Shiro’s in all the places they touched. His arms were weak on Shiro’s shoulders.

 

Shiro readjusted his grip. He pumped harder, twisting his wrist. Lance thought this was amazing, and told him so in a litany of high moans that spilled from his throat. He was getting loud; he was getting close. Shiro was too, body aflame, and tightened his grip.

 

“God, _fuck_ , Shiro, I—,” Lance babbled, chest heaving, “ _love you I love y_ —”

 

Shiro came hard.

 

Lance went absolutely still beneath him, even as Shiro spilled white all over his stomach and chest, pearly strings of come decorating his skin. In his shock Shiro stopped moving his hand.

 

“Lance—,” he tried, but Lance was mewling something small and weak as his cock gave a pathetic jolt, and then two. It dribbled feebly down his shaft and into the thick hair that curled around the base of his cock. Other than that, Lance was silent and motionless, the forearm thrown over his face hiding his eyes.

 

Shiro peeled away from him. He opened his mouth to speak, but Lance moved first. Silently, he sat up and grabbed for the vial. He scooped as much semen off his skin as he could, and tossed the container to the side after replacing the stopper. Then he fell back against the bed again. Quiet.

 

“Hah,” he said finally, forearm pressed back over his eyes. “We just had sex to save Keith’s life.”

 

“Lance—,” Shiro tried to say.

 

But then Lance was sitting up, pressing a hand to his mouth, something in his blue, blue eyes that halted Shiro in his tracks. “Stop. I don’t want to talk about it.”

 

Shiro waited for Lance to lower his hand before saying, “Lance, look, I feel the same way.”

 

Lance’s eyes widened, and Shiro knew he had the strangle the hope there before it grew.

 

“But I—,” Shiro started.

 

“Let’s not do this,” Lance said, and rolled onto his side.

 

And so Shiro was quiet.

 

He rose, ignoring the exhausted pull of the soft mattress and his afterglow, and dressed. He took the full vial to the couch, where he sat motionless until a soft knock on the door announced the Bitjetian’s return. The handover was clinical and perfunctory. Shiro went back to the couch, and sat there alone.

 

It was never just sex.

 

* * *

 

The door opened again, and Shiro tensed.

 

He hadn’t slept at all, and the stress and the weight of it encumbered his limbs. He didn’t know how long it had been. Just that Lance had fallen into a restless slumber on the bed at some point, and that the Bitjetians had brought them a sponge-like substance at one point that purportedly provided their entire necessary nutritional intake for a quintant. It was at this time that they also presented both Shiro and Lance with a small pill.

 

“Your antibiotics,” was the sparse explanation.

 

“This is it?” Lance asked, his skepticism very relatable to Shiro.

 

“That will clear the bacteria from your system,” the Bitjetian who delivered this to them replied. There was no room for further questioning on the subject, but Shiro wouldn’t even know what to ask about alien medicinal practices. He swallowed the pill without hesitation.

 

“To eliminate the chance of passing it further, please refrain from all sexual activity for the next three movements,” were the alien’s parting words.

 

Lance snorted. “That won’t be a problem.”

 

That had to have been vargas ago now.

 

Shiro was beginning to wonder at what point it would be acceptable to leave this room. To storm out in the hallway and demand from the first alien he saw to know what had happened to his friend. To his fellow Paladin of Voltron. To Keith. He considered asking Lance’s opinion, but Lance was still sprawled on top of the mattress. Shiro had no idea if he was sleeping or not.

 

He was even about to push himself up off the couch and walk to the door when there came a knock. At Shiro’s call, Morai entered.

 

“I have your companion,” they said. “Are you ready to see him?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the ending will be up thursday :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok this is it i promise

“What’s wrong with him?” Shiro asked. Not asked. More like _demanded_. Protective fury was a good look on him, and Lance found himself wishing the circumstances were better so that he could thoroughly take enjoyment in witnessing it.

 

The Bitjetian _click-clacked_ and replied, “The anesthesia has yet to wear off completely. He’ll return to himself in a few vargas.”

 

Lance didn’t know what about Keith was “not returned to himself” other than the fact that he was stumbling like the time Lance had challenged him to see who could take more shots of Olkari liquor before they passed out. (The answer was Lance, by the way, despite what other, lying eyewitnesses might try to tell you.) Keith was at least silent in his heavy leaning against the wall, his eyes dark and almost aggressive under the creases in his brow. He was looking at the ground.

 

Emotions were pulled from Lance in a fraying tangle. His overwhelming, choking relief that Keith was alive and even walking was slowly slipping to give way to other things. Amusement, for one, that Keith was currently doing his best murderous Bambi impression. Slight concern, too, but Lance didn’t dwell on this, nor the aching regret and embarrassment that throbbed like a headache. Instead, he grinned.

 

“Keith?” he said, trying to draw his attention from the floor. “How’re you feeling, buddy?”

 

Keith’s eyes snapped up towards Lance, as though discovering his presence for the first time. Instead of answering, he stared.

 

Well, that was weirder than usual.

 

Lance drew closer, still grinning. He should be taking pictures or videos or something, to remind Keith later of how stupid he looked in that swath of blue fabric that was doing its best to serve as a hospital gown. (Lance, by the way, was vehemently ignoring the jutting ridge of pale collarbone that was revealed by the swooping fabric.) But even as Lance approached, Keith only watched, crowding himself against the wall like a cat with unfamiliar company.

 

“I need to discuss the details and the final outcome of the surgery with one of you,” the Bitjetian said. “The other may stay here and care for your companion.”

 

Lance managed to draw his eyes away from Keith to look at Shiro. Shiro nodded once at him, an acknowledgement, and then turned to the alien. “I’ll go,” he said.

 

Then, suddenly, the door was closing behind them and Lance was left with silent, motionless, watching Keith.

 

“What’s up with you?” Lance asked, getting up close. He leaned down to squint into Keith’s eyes, as if he could see the cause of his strange behavior hidden there.

 

All this made Keith do was look Lance up and down. The gesture was vaguely impolite and Lance crossed his arms over his chest with a biting remark on the tip of his tongue, but Keith didn’t seem to notice. Instead his eyes were trained on Lance’s face again.

 

_He’ll return to himself in a few vargas_.

 

“Okay,” Lance said. “Well I’m gonna sit down. If you want to join me, I’ll be over here.”

 

And true to his word he walked to the couch and sat down on it. Keith stayed in his place, so Lance patted the seat beside him in invitation.

 

To his surprise, this was what got Keith to move.

 

Lance immediately felt a prickle of guilt when he saw how Keith needed the wall for support, but he had the feeling based on Keith’s earlier actions that he wouldn’t have accepted help from Lance anyway. So he only sat and watched as Keith pushed himself off the wall, and swayed on unreliable feet towards the couch, before finally crashing sideways onto both its surface and Lance.

 

“Oof. You’re heavier than you look, dude.”

 

But before Lance could help him into a sit, Keith’s hands were grabbing, clawing at him, dragging himself up Lance’s body. Lance looked down. He saw Keith’s hands fisted around his clothes, and Keith’s eyes still unwaveringly focused on his face, and Keith’s body half in his lap, and he was suddenly very glad he was on a medically advanced alien planet because he might need to be admitted for heart palpitations.

 

And somehow, somehow, it got worse. Then Keith’s hands were not just on his clothes, they were on his shoulders. Keith’s face was not just turned towards him. But now, now, Keith was shifting forward, and shoving his nose against the skin of Lance’s neck.

 

“Whoa, buddy,” Lance said, though it came out five shades more breathless than he had intended. “What’s going on?”

 

He could’ve sworn he heard Keith inhaling him deeply, but that was probably just his overactive imagination. Right? Right.

 

And then, when it couldn’t get any worse, Keith spoke.

 

“’S not fair,” he murmured, and Lance could feel the moisture in his breath, the aspiration against his skin. “Shiro gets to fuck you….”

 

Lance’s head went light. “What—Keith—?”

 

Something in the phrasing of that was wrong. There was a semantic discrepancy between the intended message and the one received. Surely it was Lance who _got to_ fuck Shiro, who was the one benefitting from the exchange. Not only in Keith’s view, but in Lance’s, too. The guy was drugged so of course subjects and objects and other basic aspects of language are tricky when your brain is working through a cloud.

 

But Keith was shifting inwards, arms spooling around Lance’s stomach. His body was hot where he touched him, and it spread from their contact points all through Lance’s skin and up his face. The muscles in his biceps contracted at Lance’s hip, grip tightening around him. A clean, medicinal scent reached him when Keith tucked his head against Lance’s shoulder, but underneath something distinctive and warm made Lance’s neck crane to catch another whiff.

 

The door opened. Shiro entered, and looked up.

 

His eyes landed on Keith first, then swung towards Lance. As their gazes met, there was something almost stricken in Shiro’s expression. Lance had to dig past the forced layer of calmness to get to it, but he could recognize something dark swimming in the depths of his eyes. It wasn’t a good look on him, at least not to Lance, whose own moods, like any other conscious-having individual, were dictated by the happiness of those he loved.

 

“Lance,” said Shiro. “I know what I said earlier. But if this is what you two want….”

 

His eyes swept from the crown of Lance’s head, across his face to Keith’s tucked into his neck, down their pressed-together torsos, their grasping arms, their tangled legs.

 

“…then I won’t stand in your way.”

 

Something inside of Lance’s head screamed for him to let go of Keith. To push his warm and frail body away, because maybe it would erase the hurt that had gathered in the lines between Shiro’s eyebrows. But his arms wouldn’t let go even if he wanted them to. This was Keith he was holding.

 

Anxiety bubbled up Lance’s throat, but Keith let go first.

 

He didn’t let go all the way. He peeled a single arm from around Lance’s ribcage, and with the other he dragged Lance upright. His eyes were laser-focused. Not on Lance, but on Shiro.

 

Dragging Lance behind him with surprising force for someone who couldn’t keep his feet under him, Keith stumbled towards Shiro. Shiro was prepared to catch him by the arms, but he wasn’t prepared for the way Keith bodily collided with him, grabbing at his shirt with the free hand that wasn’t like a leash on Lance. They all teetered for a moment, trying to catch their balance in the wake of Keith’s destructive force. Keith tipped his head back to look at Shiro.

 

“Stop being sad,” Keith said. And with his loose fist still clenched in Shiro’s shirtfront, tugged him down.

 

Lance watched him seal their lips together. Watched Shiro’s eyes momentarily widen, bug out almost comically as he realized what exactly Keith was doing to him, and then watched them slowly flutter shut. Watched the tension drain from his body like Keith had pulled out a stopper in him. Whatever he had been holding inside of him, he poured it into Keith, deflating. Keith changed their angle, pried into his mouth, and they both sighed like it was all they had ever wanted and more.

 

There was a small sound produced in the back of Lance’s throat, something like a dry laugh. And because words were all he ever had, a small, “I knew it.”

 

Keith whirled.

 

He broke apart from Shiro so fast he probably gave him roadburn. Shiro’s eyes snapped open, but Lance only barely registered, because then Keith was staring him down like he was the one thing standing between Keith and the free universe. Lance was suddenly hyperaware that they were still in contact, that his chest was still pressed against Keith’s side, that Keith was leaning heavily on his arm for support.

 

“Shut up,” Keith said.

 

And then he surged up so quickly that their noses jammed against each other, and their teeth clacked, and in the tornado violence of it all it took a long moment for Lance to register that the lips on his own were not an attack but were, in fact, Keith kissing him.

 

As far as first kisses with individuals went Lance had imagined something a bit different from Keith. In fact, he had imagined about two dozen “something different”s at various points in his acquaintance with the man. None of them had been quite this bewildering. None of them had tasted so much like sadness.

 

And certainly none of them had involved Keith breaking from his mouth to collapse against his shoulder, breathing hard and legs jelly.

 

Lance and Shiro made eye contact over Keith’s slack body, and Lance had never felt closer to Shiro than in that moment. Neither of them had any idea of what was going on.

 

Keith straightened. He flailed out an arm towards Shiro, who caught his wrist in a movement both instinctive and reverent. Keith tugged in response, reeling him in like this was his plan all along, and with his other arm around Lance he started fording towards the bed. Even drugged and surgery-weakened, Keith’s strength and sheer force of will was nothing to scoff at. Lance found himself stumbling after Keith, until together, all three of them collapsed onto the bed in a pile.

 

Electrified into motionlessness, prone in the location of his earlier defeat, Lance could only lay there, but Shiro immediately tried to roll them apart. This was only to be stopped by Keith, who in the midst of drowsily clawing himself up the bed, asked in a slurred tone, “Where’re you going?”

 

There was still a fist anchored in Lance’s shirt, which he was reminded of when it gave a yank. Lance’s sense of free will had all but evaporated at this point, so he followed it along, and Keith, satisfied, turned to pull Shiro towards him as well. “Come here,” he insisted in a way that had Shiro murmuring reassurances that he was, indeed, here, and Lance draping his arms across that lean body the way he had always wanted to.

 

Only then, only when Lance was pressed against his back and his head was tucked under Shiro’s chin, did Keith stop fidgeting, and closed his eyes.

 

“Let’s sleep,” he announced, and promptly fell to unconsciousness, as told by the way his breathing slowed under Lance’s arm.

 

Silence filled the space between them, punctuated only by Keith’s deep inhale-exhale rhythm. Lance averted his eyes until he couldn’t anymore, until the extreme pressure of the room closing in around him forced him to seek out Shiro’s gaze, and to find out what was going on behind him.

 

Shiro looked tired. In certain ways, Shiro _always_ looked tired, but this was a new, special level in which his current emotional turmoil shone clear on his face. His head was downturned, looking at Keith curled against him, but as Lance looked at him he seemed to feel the question in Lance’s eyes and turned to face it. His expression was full of something that made Lance’s insides clench. It was not a good feeling.

 

“He wants you,” Lance said, desperate for the words to make Shiro feel better. _Be_ better.

 

And, somehow, something in Shiro’s face did marginally clear at this. Some pull at his eyes disappeared. He looked from Lance back down to Keith. Then he followed the arc of his body to where Lance’s arm laid casually across it.

 

Shiro cleared his throat. “He wants you…too?”

 

Lance looked at Shiro until Shiro would meet his eyes. It took a moment, but he did it. Lance breathed in deeply.

 

“I want him. And you.”

 

With a deep, weary breath, Shiro spoke. “I don’t know if—”

 

With the arm already on Keith, Lance reached out and put his hand on Shiro’s glorious bicep. Here his arm bridged the three of their bodies, connecting them over the space of the drowsing treasure between them.

 

“Shiro,” Lance said, “is this really a bad thing?”

 

* * *

 

_Fuck_ , when had Keith gotten so _sweaty_?

 

Man, this was worse than the time he’d fallen asleep on the beach on the seven-sunned planet Ieojf. He’d been sticky all over with sweat then, but this was at least as sweltering, and in a much more oppressive, weighty way.

 

He couldn’t remember having fallen asleep, or the last time he was conscious at all, and the effect was upsettingly disorienting. His heart rate spiked, a knee-jerk panic response to the hot weight that was settled over his body and the darkness that obscured his vision. He was ready to burst into action before he stopped to focus on the sounds around him. A rhythmic pull-push, like the give and take of waves on the seashore. It was the sound of people at rest breathing.

 

Keith opened his eyes farther, willing them to catch more light. Pieces started pulling themselves together. The weight on top of him was organic and moving with the mismatched tempos of three distinct beings. The heat that encased him emanated from the solid masses pressed up against him on either side. He was lying flat on a giving and comfortable surface, and although Keith wasn’t generally one to use pillows it seemed that his head was propped up by not only a fluff-filled object but what seemed to be an _arm_ as well. The extreme warmth was body heat.

 

He began to register the shadowy grayscale shapes in front of him as a face, smooth and calm in sleep, with a strong, angular jawline and a sweep of white hair falling in disarray across his forehead. This was a face Keith could recognize in glaring sunlight and pitch darkness. His breath caught in his throat when he was struck by the nose-bridge scar that he could lean forward and trace with his own lips.

 

Keith followed this realization down. He registered the chest he was pressed against as Shiro’s. The arm thrown over his waist as Shiro’s. The legs tangled against his own as Shiro’s.

 

Well, at least some of them. To quell his rising panic he focused on the fact that some limbs here were yet unaccounted for. It didn’t take Pidge’s intellect to hypothesize who they belonged to. As far as Keith knew there was only one other person on this planet besides himself and Shiro whose legs bent like that, whose arm could feel that smooth tucked under his head.

 

How the hell did he end up _here_?

 

While gently unwinding his own arm from around Shiro’s body, he tried to follow his trail of memories to this moment. He remembered being in pain. He vaguely remembered collapsing in the Castle-ship, leg a wreck of mottled purple under his feverish skin. There were some hazy memories of being carried by Shiro, as though seen through frosted glass, and then, much later, of Keith pressing his face into Lance’s neck, and telling him something very, _very_ embarrassing.

 

Yeah, nope. It was high time to get out of this bed.

 

Keith wriggled, praying not to wake his bedmates. That would only cause a confrontation, and Keith had had enough for one day. (If it was even the same day, that is, and he got the feeling that it wasn’t.) At least he was alive, he thought savagely as he pulled his thigh from between Shiro’s. At least he was alive and all his body parts appeared to be present and in working order. Wherever he was, he had been saved.

 

Though given his current position, maybe dying would have saved him years of mortification.

 

“Keith?”

 

_Fuck_.

 

Lance’s voice was sleep-slurred, sweet, and the last thing Keith wanted to hear right now. He ignored it and continued to disentangle himself, but the further jostling only woke their other bedmate as well.

 

Presumably still dream-hazy, Shiro’s arm, which had only just been gently pushed aside, wormed its way back over Keith, and _held_. Barely stirring, Shiro yawned. Keith shoved his arm off again, and kicked away Lance’s leg that had somehow hooked into the joint of his knee when Keith had been distracted by Shiro.

 

“Wait, Keith,” Lance said, which seemed to draw Shiro to full wakefulness. “Come on, dude. Chill a second.”

 

Suddenly Keith felt primal. He was cornered prey here.

 

“No,” he replied, crawling his way out from between them. He didn’t know this bed. He suddenly wondered if he even knew these people. “Where are we? Why are we sleeping like this?”

 

Keith swung around to face them, and through the dark he caught sight of Lance’s face, drawn into some shade of disappointment or annoyance.

 

“It was _your_ idea,” Lance said.

 

And, okay, yeah, Keith did have some vague, foggy recollection of settling onto this bed and pulling both Shiro and Lance tight against him, and fighting back when they made attempts to escape. So it was his idea. A terrible idea but his nonetheless. As this dawned on him he put his head in his hands and dragged them both up his face and into his hair.

 

“Hey, Keith,” Shiro said, and the lowness of it was grounding.

 

“Don’t freak out, man,” Lance tagged on, and somehow that too was a solid place for Keith to stand on.

 

Keith sighed, and covered his eyes with his hand. This was absolutely not ideal, but in hindsight maybe this served him right for agreeing to have sex with Shiro in the first place. It was that kind of selfishness that had landed him here. He had enough brainpower about his befuddled mind to connect some dots: he’d passed out because he’d contracted a killer alien STD. He was here, wherever the hell here was, to fix him. He’d been on weird alien drugs because he needed surgery; he’d broken countless rules in the “How to Morally and Plantonically Get Along with Your Teammates” handbook because he’d been on weird alien drugs. And the result was this: whatever achingly mortifying future he was staring down, it was his own damn fault. Behind the cover of his cupped hand, he shut his eyes.

 

“I’m sorry,” he tried.

 

The mattress shifted. Keith blinked his eyes open to see Shiro was sitting up too. Lance moved from somewhere in front of him and, to Keith’s irritation, overheads lights flicked on.

 

“For?” Shiro prompted gently.

 

“This,” Keith said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of everything on the surface of the bed. “And…for kissing you.”

 

Keith didn’t look at either of them. Some part of him was clinging to the hope that _that_ part had been a dream, and that when he looked at their faces again they’d be wearing matching expressions of, _Kissing us?_

 

They weren’t. Lance just looked troubled.

 

“You’re sorry as in, you’re sorry it happened while you were high on alien meds? Or as in you wish it hadn’t happened?”

 

“Um.” Keith swallowed. “Bo—”

 

“ _Because_ ,” Lance cut in quickly, “I wasn’t really against that. Just so you know.”

 

Keith could feel the flush come into his cheeks hard and fast. His voice was a little more rough and aggressive as it came out than he had intended, but the edge of the bed felt like a cliff drop-off behind him. “What do you mean?”

 

Lance groaned as if in exasperation.

 

This was when Shiro swooped in, sitting up towards Keith with a gesture that looked like it belonged on someone planning to mount an intractable horse. Instead of addressing the current topic of conversation, he asked, “How are you feeling?”

 

Keith frowned, while Lance laughed something about supposing that should’ve been question number one. He ignored him in order to take stock of his body parts. The discussion he’d been having with Lance was infuriatingly embarrassing and probably important, but nothing could be achieved without a working body, and Keith was happy to shove aside any conversation that required emotional response. This, a categorical mental survey of what hurt and what didn’t, was far preferable.

 

“My leg feels weird,” he admitted after a pause. “And I’m stiff all over.”

 

“Stiff?” Lance wiggled his eyebrows. “We can help y—”

 

Fast as neural signals and just as automatic, Shiro grabbed Lance and dragged him towards his chest, slapping a hand over his mouth.

 

“It’s probably just from the surgery,” Shiro said. “They told me that you might not be able to walk on your own for a few quintants, but that should resolve quickly. Nothing hurts, right?”

 

But Shiro’s voice drained out of Keith’s ears, because he was distracted. Distracted by Lance making himself completely at home against Shiro’s chest, falling lax into his hold, while Shiro’s arms settled down unquestioningly around him.

 

“Keith?”

 

At the prompting, Keith snapped back to attention. Right. Questions. He quickly lied, “Nothing hurts.”

 

“Great!” Lance said. “Then let’s get down to business.” He was beaming something awful, lips straining like he was trying to keep it tamped down to a coy smirk and failing spectacularly. It was positively shit-eating. “Keith, you kissed me.”

 

Emotion flared in Keith. Irritation? Regret? Embarrassment? Hard to label. He only knew it was hot and destructive.

 

“I said I was sorry!”

 

“You don’t have to apologize,” said Lance, looking at his fingernails with a spurious casualness. “You can make it up to me by doing it again.”

 

Keith flinched, as though the words were a physical attack.

 

“Or _not_ ,” cut in Shiro, stern but well-meaning. “If he didn’t mean it.”

 

Lance’s face fell. It was immediately clear that he hadn’t considered that option. And that was what caused Keith to say, voice low,

 

“I meant it.”

 

Shiro and Lance’s eyes both locked on him.

 

“Say that again,” Lance said.

 

“I meant it.”

 

This time Keith’s voice held a modicum of surety, even if he didn’t know where it came from. Maybe there was nothing to gain from admitting that at this point, but maybe there was. He didn’t know. Either way, he was tired of keeping up this front. The realization was coming to him now that if he had just been open about what he wanted, maybe he wouldn’t be staring down the two most important people in his life on a bed on a hospital planet with nonfunctional legs.

 

If they rejected him, so be it. He could survive like he survived everything else. He had not come this far on hope and love.

 

And yet, somehow, the mattress shifted beneath him as Lance moved. And then he was there. And now, Lance was kissing him.

 

Despite all the explosive force that always fizzled and simmered between them, they met gently this time. But not unenthusiastically. Lance’s hands went to Keith’s shoulders in a motion of pure desire to keep him close, then slid down his arms to his waist. Keith reciprocated by parting his lips and tasting Lance. Lance hummed in appreciation.

 

“Hey,” Lance said, breathy and hot, between two open-mouthed kisses.

 

“Yeah?” Keith replied in a similar fashion. His heart beat so hard it wracked his whole body.

 

“Don’t you think it’s great,” _kiss_ , “that you like Shiro,” _kiss_ , “and I like Shiro,” _kiss_ , “and Shiro likes you, and Shiro likes me,” _kiss, kiss, kiss_ , “and I like you,” _kiss_ , “and you like me?”

 

Keith huffed a laugh straight into Lance’s mouth that had them both finally separating completely.

 

“Is this an anesthesia dream?” Keith asked.

 

Lance laughed from his stomach, full of joy. “Nah, we’re the _real deal_ , buddy.”

 

“It’s a little unconventional by Earth standards,” said Shiro from behind Keith, sounding content just to spectate. “And I think I have a few things to work through.” He took a deep breath. “But since we all like each other, there’s no real reason we can’t.”

 

Keith’s response was to press his tongue into Lance’s mouth again, and to feel the way this caused Lance to shiver against him. His lips felt raw when drew back and blinked at Lance.

 

“You really like me?” Keith asked. His mouth felt suddenly dry. He swallowed. “Both of you?”

 

“Yeah,” Lance said. He hadn’t stopped smiling. “Weirdly enough.”

 

Shiro immediately derailed this conversation by putting a proprietary hand on Keith’s shoulder. It probably wasn’t meant to come off like that, but paired with the consumed expression on his face it was obvious he was desperate for Keith’s attention.

 

Keith gave it, and freely. He twisted in Lance’s hold until he faced Shiro head-on. The distance between them was the line of polite and intimate, and neither of them seemed to know how to navigate it from there. Keith found Shiro’s eyes and stalled, suddenly aware of how everything, _everything_ , was falling into place.

 

Lance gave a healthy push to Keith’s back.

 

“Lance,” Keith protested, but it lacked the intended strength when it came out as a breathless whisper. His eyes never left Shiro’s face, even as the shove brought them closer.

 

“Are you sure, Keith?” Shiro said, the hand on his shoulder coming up to cup his face and thumb at his jawline. “I’m—”

 

“Shiro,” Keith growled, a _shut up_ and an _I love you_ and a desperate plea all at once. He lunged forward.

 

Moments later, when Shiro broke off gasping, his eyes were wild and desperate when they landed first on Keith, and then on Lance.

 

“As nice as this is,” he said, “the doctor did say no sex for three movements.”

 

“That worked up from a little kissing?” teased Keith, who despite his words was also a little winded.

 

“You would be too, if you kissed you,” Lance said. “Or even had to watch you kissing Shiro. Damn.”

 

Keith elbowed him.

 

“I’m not ready to be eaten from the inside out again quite yet,” Keith said. “Keep it in your pants.”

 

“It’s not fair,” Lance whined, rolling over towards Keith and looking up at him with a pout. “I’ve slept with Shiro…and you’ve slept with Shiro…we need to complete the circle.”

 

“We can,” Keith replied. “In three weeks.”

 

Shiro, grinning dopily at the ceiling with the joy of his recent acceptance, collapsed to the surface of the bed. “At least we’re cleared to leave the planet tomorrow. Provided Keith gets a good night’s rest.”

 

As if directed by some migratory instinct, Lance wasted no time in crawling past Keith and laying himself against Shiro’s side. They both shuffled comfortably until they were fully on the bed, Lance encased in Shiro’s arms and tucked into the curve of his body.

 

“Get over here,” Shiro told Keith.

 

With caution, Keith inched closer, averting his eyes under Shiro’s admiring gaze, and then found himself yanked down onto the surface of the mattress by Lance’s arms around his waist. Lance shifted so that their bodies ran parallel, and pressed in towards him, arms tight around his torso. Keith let Lance press his nose into the junction of his neck and his shoulder and inhale deeply, because in the next moment Shiro’s hand was there too, from behind Lance, stroking down Keith’s hip where he could reach.

 

Suddenly, Keith’s chest expanded. It was hard to breathe, but the lack of oxygen was heady and thrilling.

 

“I’ll tell you a secret, if it makes you feel better,” Lance said, muffled against the skin of his neck. “I only first offered to sleep with Shiro because I thought it’d get your attention.”

 

Keith shoved himself out of Lance’s arms. “ _What_?”

 

Despite being left with an empty embrace, Lance looked unperturbed. “Yeah. I mean, I thought Shiro was hot and a cool guy and all but I wasn’t really interested in that from him back then.” Lance squirmed so that he was in a position to peck a kiss to Shiro’s jawline. “No offense, Shiro.”

 

“None taken,” Shiro said, utterly unsurprised. “You weren’t much on my radar either, in that respect.”

 

Heat flared up in Keith’s stomach. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

 

Lance winked up at him. “It worked, didn’t it?”

 

Looking down at Shiro fit snug against Lance’s back, Lance’s arms waiting and open for him, Keith sighed. This is what he had wanted. From the day he had sparred with Shiro in the gym at the Garrison and found himself breathless with more than physical exertion. When he had found Lance’s comforting words worming under his skin and leaving him reenergized and motivated, when Lance’s jibes and challenges gave him the vivacity that a desert lacked. He had fallen for these things and found himself inextricably tangled and knotted to these people.

 

And that wasn’t so bad.

 

Keith lay out beside Lance, who combed fingers through his hair while bemoaning its cut and style between quiet admittances that he actually liked it. Shiro sat up to massage Keith’s still-numb feet, despite the lack of feeling in them. And Keith fell asleep there, cushioned softly by the knowledge that for once in his life, he had his place here between them.

 

* * *

 

“Hey,” Shiro said, scolding. “What did the doctor say?”

 

“We’re not having sex!” Lance replied, too quickly.

 

Though this was demonstrably true, the hungry and sharpened expression on Keith’s face told Shiro that if he hadn’t intervened they might have been making a trip back to Ta Bitjet much sooner than previously anticipated. Other evidence for such a hypothesis included the way Lance was straddling Keith’s waist, and how both of them had stripped down to nothing but their boxers.

 

Shiro had wandered into Keith’s room to ask after his leg and see if he needed anything, but rather than Keith resting in bed, this was the scene that had awaited him. Admittedly, it wasn’t an unpleasant one. He was easily able to push away the slight peevishness that came with the idea that they hadn’t _told_ him there was going to be a mostly-naked make out session here and now, since it had probably been spontaneous. What remained after that were two things: concern about proper healing, and an insistent pull of blood towards his lower body and the surface of his face.

 

Obviously outwardly the former won out. Inwardly, Shiro couldn’t shake thoughts of that night alone with Keith from his head. He was as desperate to get his hands on Keith as Lance seemed to be.

 

(And if he could get his hands on Lance in the process as well, then that was welcomed. More than welcomed. Ideal. He appreciated their cuddles and their kisses but he was a living, breathing human, after all, and Lance’s body was the siren song that would always steer Shiro to ruin.)

 

Shiro sat at the edge of the bed with a sigh, allowing himself to appreciate the contrast of their skin tones, their smooth bare skin, the hard muscles that they’d both built after months at war despite their lean frames. Separately they were beautiful. Together, they were a priceless masterpiece. Shiro ignored the way his cock stirred when he caught sight of how Keith and Lance’s underwear weren’t doing much to conceal their own interest.

 

“Yet,” Shiro replied.

 

Lance groaned, but backed away from Keith to slump against the wall of the cot. “Has it really not been three weeks?”

 

“It’s been six days,” Keith replied.

 

And that left three men, forced into abstinence, sitting on Keith’s bed uncomfortably aroused in silence.

 

“I hope your dicks are ready in two weeks,” Lance said. “I’m gonna blow you away. And also just blow you.”

 

“Mine’s ready _now_ ,” Keith huffed.

 

And then, quietly, without looking, as though he wasn’t even aware of it himself, he traced a hand from his own chest, down the lines of his abs, over his hipbones, and plunged it under the fabric of his underwear. Shiro’s eyes widened, though he couldn’t move his gaze. The small scrap of clothing gave no illusions to what Keith was doing under there. It drove a stuttering beat into Shiro’s chest.

 

“Um,” Lance squeaked. “Whatcha up to, Keith?”

 

Keith looked utterly casual. “Come on, it’s not like it’s anything you weren’t about to do to me yourself,” he said. “I’m just gonna take care of it. This is my room. If you don’t like it, you can leave.”

 

“On the contrary,” Shiro said, and finding his voice rough had to clear his throat. “Is it okay if I stay?”

 

Keith’s smirk, torn open viciously fast and full of a glittering triumph, was all the answer Shiro needed before his eyes were pulled back down towards where Keith’s hand was beginning to work. From the way the fabric tented with his entire hand shoved down there, much of Keith’s cock still remained in shadow, but the tip of it poked out from where his fist was loosely circled around it. Shiro had seen it before, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to see it again, now sober and attached to a person he knew returned his feelings.

 

“It’s not fair that you’re the only one dressed though,” Keith said.

 

“I can fix that,” Lance announced, and crawled up behind Shiro on his knees. Distracted by Keith’s lazy rhythmicism, Shiro almost flinched when a pair of arms wrapped around him. Lance’s hands started over his clothed abs and then openly appreciated the feel of his pecs before finding the top of his zipper and dragging it down. Shiro let it happen easily, and also let Lance’s hands rove over his body before tugging his shirt out from where it was tucked into his pants. Lance curled his fingers beneath the fabric so that they rubbed against Shiro’s skin.

 

And just as Shiro’s eyes were on Keith, Keith’s eyes were avidly trained on him, eyeing every exposed inch like a wolf would eye its prey. With Lance’s assistance, Shiro’s shirt cleared his head and was lost somewhere to the foot of the bed. Keith tightened his fist and gave a breathy sigh. If Shiro thought his heart was beating fast before, now it was a bullet train’s wheels thudding over the rail ties, it was the heavy pounding of a frantic war drum.

 

Next were Shiro’s pants. Lance’s fingers ghosted over the button and zipper, and even the slight pressure felt good against what was underneath, but Shiro wouldn’t let it go much farther than that. Not good, not safe. Not fair. He could wait. He’d waited this long. For now, he could enjoy the view. Shiro toed his boots off and then wriggled out of his pants, until he too was only contained by his underwear.

 

“Well,” he said, coming to a decision as he met Keith’s eyes, “I guess you’ve both seen me naked and turned on at this point,” and took that off too, so that he sat completely naked on Keith’s bed, cock hard and curving up towards his stomach.

 

Keith appreciated this very much, if the way he inhaled sharply and bit his lip was anything to go by. Soon he too was tugging down his underwear, kicking it off his feet. Now Shiro could watch _exactly_ what he was doing, and Shiro was grateful for it. Keith’s cockhead was pink and pretty where it peeked out from the end of his fist. Lance was the last to strip down, and there was no way he could’ve missed the way Keith looked over with pure lascivious interest when he did. Shiro did as well, and though it was a body part he was already well-acquainted with, he felt a shiver of lust and appreciation knowing that it was now his to see whenever he pleased.

 

“God,” Keith breathed. “You two are unfairly hot.”

 

“Right back at you, babe,” Lance said, and then without further preamble grabbed himself around his girth and began to pump.

 

And this, this here, was what did Shiro in. Shiro knew that he would never again have the strength to regret setting foot on that godforsaken fake-distress signal bacteria planet. Not when Keith was stretched out on his back like this, one hand grabbing the pillow beneath his head while the other worked languidly over himself. Not when Lance settled back against the wall with his legs spread wide open, five fingers wrapped around his cock while two on his other hand stroked down his perineum, closer and closer to his hole. Not when they were both grinning around breathy little moans as they did this, first at each other, and then at him.

 

Not when they finally belonged to him, and he belonged to them. This all was his for the taking. His for the loving.

 

If there was ever a chance of Shiro not joining them, it was long gone. His hips ached just looking at them. He made himself comfortable facing them, and then reached down to palm himself.

 

Lance was staring openly as he ran his fingers over himself. “I want that inside me.”

 

“Two more weeks,” Keith reminded. His hair splayed out on the pillow around his face, a dark and silky halo, and though he didn’t make the effort of raising his head his eyes flickered back and forth between Lance and Shiro. Shiro felt them as a thrilling shock every time they landed on him. Their physical impact was real; a creature so beautiful tracking his movements so carefully was going to have a noticeable effect on his cock. Keith’s chest heaved with the sharp intakes of his breath, pink nipples rising and falling with each inhale-exhale, and Shiro traced his vision over the bare imprint of his ribcage, the distinct ridges of his muscle. Keith’s hand was picking up speed over himself, his steady _up-down up-down_ growing tighter, faster, pausing for a pass over the head that made Keith’s thighs jump. Shiro gulped it all down. Committed it to memory, so that in the future he would know exactly where he wanted to put his hands, and how.

 

When Shiro’s eyes trailed back to Keith’s face, Keith was smiling knowingly at him. Embarrassment seared Shiro’s lungs but he was too aroused to let it bother him at this point. He could save being apologetic about his hearty appreciation for Keith’s body until after they were done here.

 

“God, Shiro,” Keith breathed, and Shiro was filled by the buoyant awareness that Keith was admiring him just as much.

 

A breathy whine yanked at both of their attentions, heads snapping around to fix gazes on Lance. His head was tipped back against the wall, his eyes heavy-lidded, looking back at them from underneath thick eyelashes. His bottom lip pulled between his teeth, biting hard in concentration, in overwhelmed jolts of pleasure, in focus on the visual feast spread out before him. His wrist twisted as he stroked, deft and knowledgeable, and Shiro thirsted for the feel of those long, trigger-calloused fingers. The sight of them had Shiro’s breath stuttering, their dark curl around the shaft of his own cock, pulling, pulling, pulling the pleasure out from himself.

 

Lance had jokingly told him once that he was the master of masturbation, that his right hand was his best friend, but seeing him now Shiro could read all the truth in that. There was something more than genuine about Lance’s enjoyment of himself. It seemed so thorough and absolute that Shiro briefly wondered what Lance’s need for him was at all, until he felt rather than saw the slow, searing crawl of Lance’s gaze down his body. It was about then that Lance began to babble.

 

“I wanna fuck Keith at the same time that you fuck me,” he said. The words landed in Shiro’s hips like a grenade. “Or maybe both of us can put it in you at the same time. You think he could take us, Keith?”

 

“Fuck yeah,” Keith panted, and his words were low, hoarse, slurred.

 

“He’d take us so good,” Lance said. “You’d be so pretty. God, you’re so pretty _now_ —”

 

Shiro moaned, because now the attention was on him, the attention was on him and his hand and the cock in it, hard and leaking precome from its tip. He was pulled taut in all the right places, all from the sounds of skin on skin and Keith’s gravelly low grunts and Lance’s throaty little moans between his words. Shiro had had a lot of sex lately. A lot of _good_ sex lately, with people he loved, even if they hadn’t known it at the time. But somehow this open show of an act private even sometimes among lovers had him buzzing.

 

And that was just the foundation this laid upon. He was still riding the crackling ecstatic emotional high of being confessed to, being accepted, accepting it himself, and being _loved_ , that this first intimate act between them felt warm against his skin. His fingers itched to reach out and touch them, put his own hands over theirs until they fell apart beneath him, but in the meantime he kept his hands to himself and let his eyes wander.

 

Well, that, and he bent forward and pressed his lips to the side of Keith’s knee, which drew a gasp out of him. Lance, never one to be left out of the action, leaned in too and drew Shiro up. His lips met Shiro’s, sloppy, unrefined, focus and intent forgotten as his body hummed with the tension of a building orgasm. Lance moaned right into his mouth, warm and tender and loose and uncontrolled.

 

Shiro’s free hand reached out blindly, found Keith’s thigh, ran his palm down it, _squeezed_. He was rewarded with a mantra of his name, pleasure-thick and rapid, though the feel of the muscle underneath would’ve been enough for Shiro. Instead now his inside of his chest felt like nuclear fusion. Lance, giving up on trying to make his lips work, pulled back enough that his forehead rested against Shiro’s and he panted against Shiro’s mouth.

 

“Fuck,” he said once, and then again. He slipped down to rest his head on Shiro’s shoulder, face angled towards Keith to watch him. “ _Quiznak_ , Keith, you’re so—so….”

 

Lance’s skin burned against Shiro. Shiro could smell him. His sweet shampoo, the faint tang of his sweat. Shiro could drown in that smell and be pleased. He pressed his lips to Lance’s ear.

 

“Are you going to come for me?” he asked quietly.

 

“Fuck, _yes_ , Shiro, Keith—”

 

Lance’s whole body shuddered, his mouth falling open, his breathing harsh and loud. He bent like a bow, his weight supported by where he had propped himself on Shiro’s shoulder.

 

The sight of Lance’s come spilling out from between the fingers of his closed fist must’ve been too much for Keith, because suddenly he was writhing, arching off the bed, legs shaking, and with a, “ _God, Lance_ —,” he too spurted out all over his own stomach. He stroked himself through, breathing ragged, head tossed back and wild.

 

It was the combination of all this, all this and the heightened tug at his gut, the tight knot in his lower body, coalesced into something unbearable and teetering. Lance was warm before him and Keith was beautiful as his cock softened in his hand, and in his desperation Shiro thumbed at his slit, hips jerking, tightened his grip, and stroked once, twice, three times.

 

He jolted hard as he came, frantic for the friction to help him through, pleasure sparking behind his eyelids and quaking through his lower body. Shiro sucked in shallow breaths against Lance, heat drenching his fingers. Soaking in the dizzy clouded haze of it he felt all the tension sap out of him, muscles falling loose, Lance’s breath against him and Keith’s appreciative hum in his ears.

 

It took a long moment of heartbeats that seemed to shake his entire body before he felt centered again. Blinking his eyes open, Shiro slid back away from Lance, careful not to touch him with his contaminated hand, and to steer clear of Lance’s own bodily fluids.

 

“Two more weeks,” he said, feeling his lips quirk into a smile.

 

Lance groaned, but Keith pushed himself up onto his elbows and grinned. His hair was wild, his stomach streaked with his own come, but Shiro had never seen anyone or anything more beautiful.

 

“I’m sure we can find ways to entertain ourselves until then,” he said.

 

* * *

 

 

Shiro was sleeping well these days.

 

Better than he had been before, at least. He’d never had a perfect sleep schedule, if such a thing existed for anyone. But there was a big difference between not sleeping because you can’t and not sleeping because you don’t want to. Now Shiro was experiencing quite a bit of the latter and not too much of the former. And of course, the reasons for that were his two new bedmates.

 

Maybe splitting his focus like this while there was a war for the fate of the _universe_ happening around them was disrespectful to every life form that had ever evolved. A relationship was built out of time, effort, and sacrifice. Shiro didn’t have those resources on hand; to use them was to borrow them from all those under Galra rule. And yet there was a flip side: more sleep meant better performance. Happier paladins meant a happier universe. To take care of others you have to take care of yourself first. Shiro’s life gained solidity, a steadiness, that he hadn’t experienced since he had waved goodbye to Keith before boarding a rocket bound for Kerberos.

 

He wasn’t the only one. Lance’s positive effects on Keith were glaring. Keith was wholly happier and more grounded, his place in the group cemented and solidified. Similarly, the sort of accomplishments that Keith pulled from Lance were ones that only he could. Keith provided Lance with a goal and a motivation, and the sort of sharp banter that saved him from his own insecurities. Shiro wasn’t one to talk of his own impact on them, but they came to him beaming with kisses and open arms night after night, and together they thrived in it.

 

Anyway, the bottom line was this: Shiro may not have saved anyone by responding to that distress signal, but maybe that distress signal was what saved him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaand that's it :) thanks for hanging in there for so long! i know this fic has its problems but i really appreciate all the love and support i've gotten for it these past few months. you guys are the best!
> 
> you can stop reading here because what i'm about to say isn't important, but i wanted to give a bit of background on what this fic means to me. i started writing it exactly six months ago today on my birthday. it was my present to myself, because the only person who'd acknowledged my birthday at all had just removed themselves from my life. they'd offered to write me whatever i wanted, so i took one of the prompts i'd given them ("shklance sex pollen") and started writing it myself. i wanna put my own name in the "gift this work to" field haha
> 
> i know 40k isn't long, but it's felt like a journey for me. this fic could've easily been done 4 months ago but i kept writing and rewriting parts until i drove myself insane. this finished product is maybe not the _best_ product (and damn if i couldn't pick it apart and tell you exactly what's wrong with it), but i did succeed in writing what i wanted to write, which was the point anyway, right? 
> 
> anyway, with the posting of this fic i feel like i can close a part of my life and move forward. the past half a year or so has been the most difficult of my life so far, but i'm starting to learn how to make better decisions for myself and figure out what i need to do from now on. so thanks for reading, and for always being so kind and supporting me!
> 
> and happy birthday, me

**Author's Note:**

> i’ve been spewing garbage on [my tumblr](http://epiproctan.tumblr.com/) a lot more lately so come bathe in filth with me there  
> you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/epiproctan) too


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